HIGHWAY PATROL TEACHING OFFICERS TO DETERMINE IF DRIVERS ARE UNDER
INFLUENCE OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

BUTTE - As more and more people obtain medical marijuana cards,
Montana law enforcement is focusing its training on detecting drugged
drivers.

While police are trained to detect if a motorist is drunk, the Montana
Highway Patrol is also teaching its officers how to determine whether
a driver is under the influence of prescription drugs or marijuana.

Kurt Sager, a drug recognition expert for the Montana Highway Patrol,
said some motorists are putting the public in danger by driving after
ingesting prescription drugs or medical marijuana. He said it is
illegal to driving under the influence of any drug, whether the drug
is legal or not.

"People think if it's a prescription or recommended by a doctor, that
it can't be bad (to drive on)," Sager said.

Marijuana and some prescription drugs can impair a person's ability to
drive and can lead to crashes. Sager said that marijuana-related
crashes have increased over the past three years in Montana.

In 2007, 32 traffic fatalities involved cannabis, according to Sager.
Fatal accidents involving marijuana increased by one to 33 in 2008,
and last year, the patrol tallied 39 marijuana-related fatalities,
according to patrol statistics.

The Montana Crime Lab in Missoula received 1,480 blood samples in 2009
for DUI-related investigations, Sager reported. Of those samples, 231
tested positive for marijuana, which is about 15 percent of the samples.

"We have to let people know that it's not socially acceptable to
driving under the influence of any drug or alcohol," Sager said.

Officers determine if a person is drunk by using the Standardized
Field Sobriety Test, which involves having a motorist perform three
exercises.

Now, officers also are being trained to detect drug impairment through
a test called Advanced Roadside Impaired Driving Enforcement, or
ARIDE. Under ARIDE, two additional exercises are designed to detect
possible narcotics impairment.

The field sobriety test for alcohol impairment requires the driver to
walk a straight line and turn and to balance on one leg, along with
the horizontal gaze nystagmus, which detects jerky movements of the
eye.

The ARIDE tests adds an exercise that has motorists stand with their
feet together, arms at their sides, and lean their head back with
their eyes closed. Sager said if the officer observes swaying, that
could be a sign of drug influence.

A second exercise has the subject follow the officer's finger in an
attempt to make the subject go cross-eyed. Sager explained that some
drug effects make it impossible to go cross-eyed.

Butte-Silver Bow Chief Deputy Assistant County Attorney Samm Cox said
the more training police have in drug detection, the better chance he
will have getting DUI convictions.

"We get convictions by the better collection of evidence from a
trained officer," Cox said.

And while alcohol-related DUI charges often come with blood-alcohol
test results, Cox said he is just as likely to get convictions of
those suspected of driving under the influence of drugs or marijuana.

Capt. Gary Becker of the patrol's Butte District said officers
probably encountered motorists who were under the influence of some
type of drug, but didn't have the proper training to recognize it.

The updated training is helping that.

"The better we are at detecting impairment, the safer everyone on the
road is," Becker said.