SOME WARY OF 'DRUGGED DRIVING' LAW

WASHINGTON -- Citing estimates that 11 million people sometimes drive
under the influence of illegal drugs, a growing chorus in U.S.
Congress wants the government to do something about it. The states are
wary. Eight states now have specific laws on "drugged driving," but
their statutes are vague. None specifies an equivalent level to the
0.08 percent blood content that Congress established as the legal
level for alcohol impairment.

That's partly because there's no roadside test to detect the presence
of drugs in the body -- no handy "breathalyzer" as there is for alcohol.

And even if blood or urine samples taken at a hospital test positive
for drugs, there's no standard for how high is too high to drive.

"Zero tolerance" is the level some lawmakers want Congress to
establish. A motorist found to have any controlled substance in his or
her system would be considered unlawfully impaired.

"Everyone who drives is affected by this," said Rep. Rob Portman,
R-Ohio, citing a report last September by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services estimating that during the previous year
nearly 11 million people drove at one time or another under the
influence of drugs.

The same survey said three times as many people -- 33.5 million --
drove under the influence of alcohol in 2002.

Portman introduced a bill last week that would create a model
drug-impaired driving law for states to adopt to address what
proponents say is a monumental problem that has gone largely ignored.

Eight states already have drug-impairment laws, according to the
American Prosecutors Research Institute. They are Arizona, Georgia,
Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Utah.

"In every state of the country it's illegal for someone to drive under
the influence of any drug or substance that may cause them to be
impaired," said John Bobo, director of the National Traffic Law Center
at APRI.

But in these eight states, it is "per-se illegal" to have any
detectable amount of a controlled substance in your system.