HIGHWAY PATROL OFFICERS TRAINING TO SPOT DRUGGED DRIVERS

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

While police are trained to determine if someone is under the
influence of alcohol, the Montana Highway Patrol is putting emphasis
on training officers to determine if people are driving while under
the influence of prescription drugs or marijuana.

Kurt Sager, a drug recognition expert for the 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
drive under the influence of any drug, whether the drug is legally
prescribed 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.

But marijuana and some prescription drugs can impair a person's
ability to drive and lead to crashes. Sager says that marijuana-related

crashes have increased over the past three years

in Montana.

In 2007, there were 32 traffic fatalities involving cannabis,
according to Sager. The number of fatal accidents involving marijuana
increased by one in 2008, and last year there were 39
marijuana-related fatalities, according to Highway Patrol statistics.

The Montana Crime Lab in Missoula received 1,480 blood samples in
2009 for DUI-related investigation, 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 be
driving under the influence of any drug or alcohol," Sager said.

Officers are trained to determine if a person is drunk by using the
Standardized Field Sobriety Test, which involves having a motorist
perform three exercises. They're also being trained to detect
possible drug impairment - that test is called Advanced Roadside
Impaired Driving Enforcement.

Under ARIDE, two additional exercises reveal possible narcotics impairment.

Highway Patrol Capt. Gary Becker said the training will be a good
tool for his troopers. Becker said they have probably encountered
motorists that were under the influence of some type of drug, but
didn't have the proper training to recognize it.

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

The field sobriety test requires a driver to walk a straight line and
turn, balance on one leg and pass the horizontal gaze "nystagmus,"
which detects jerky movements of the eye. The ARIDE tests add 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
drugs make it impossible to go cross-eyed.