LAW ENFORCEMENT TRAINING TO DETECT DRUGGED DRIVERS

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
if 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 it 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 says 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, balance on one leg and the horizontal
gaze nystagmus, which detects jerky movements of the eye.

The ARIDE tests adds an exercise that has the motorist stand with
feet together, arms at the sides and leaning the head back with 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 on
those suspect 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.