NEW LAW SPELLS OUT LIMITS FOR DRUGGED DRIVERS

Ohioans who drive under the influence of illegal drugs, or even with
traces of drugs in their blood, face jail time and stiff fines under
a bill Gov. Bob Taft signed into law yesterday.

Taft and other supporters of Ohio's "drugged driving" law said it
will protect people from drivers impaired by cocaine, marijuana,
methamphetamines and other substances. Ohio becomes the 12 th state
to set specific limits on how much narcotic is allowed in a person's
blood before it is illegal to drive or operate a watercraft.

In other states, and in Ohio before the new law takes effect in 90
days, it' s illegal to drive while impaired by drugs, including
otherwise legal prescription medications.

But before Taft signed the law yesterday, police and judges had wide
discretion to determine whether a driver was actually impaired.

"It makes it a much fairer playing field for everyone: law
enforcement, the courts, drivers who take the wheel," said Sen. Steve
Austria, R-Beavercreek, the chief sponsor of the bill. "It varied
from court to court and county to county and judge to judge depending
on their definition of who was impaired."

The law spells out blood-level concentrations of common drugs above
which it is illegal to drive. More controversially, it also outlaws
driving with certain levels of metabolites: the end product that
remains in the body after a drug has been metabolized.

That drew strong criticism from the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws, which contends that a casual marijuana user
could be charged with a felony for driving to work on a Monday after
smoking moderate quantities of marijuana on the weekend.

"Arresting someone who used marijuana two, four, 10, 20 days ago is
not enhancing public safety," said Allen St. Pierre, NORML's
executive director. "In the end, it's science that needs to be
logically dictating the law. I'm not sure why the politics drove this
when the science does not support it."

The State Highway Patrol, which helped write the new law, said it's
unlikely to radically change the way drugged drivers are arrested and
prosecuted.

Any driver who appears to be impaired can be arrested and forced to
take a urine or blood test on penalty of losing his or her driving
privileges, Sgt. Craig Cvetan said. The new law establishes uniform standards.

But Cvetan said that it will be more difficult to enforce than
alcohol laws because there's no narcotics equivalent of the common
roadside Breathalyzer test.