LAWMAKERS TAKE ON "DRUGGED DRIVING'

WASHINGTON- Citing estimates that 11 million people sometimes drive under
the influence of illegal drugs, a growing chorus in 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. Robert J. Portman,
R-Ohio, citing a report last September by the 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.

Under Portman's proposal, states that enact similar laws defining impaired
as any detectable amount of drugs in a blood or urine sample would get
money for training police and prosecutors and for driver counseling. They
would also get grants to research field tests to measure motorists' drug
levels.

Rather than offering a carrot, Rep. John C. Porter Sr., R-Nev., prefers the
stick approach. His bill would make states that don't enact drug-impaired
driving laws forfeit 1 percent of their annual federal highway funds to the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The amount forfeited would
double each year up to 50 percent.

States are wary of both approaches, recalling that when incentives were not
enough to persuade some of them to adopt the 0.08 blood alcohol limit for
drunken driving, Congress in 2000 directed that up to 6 percent of their
federal highway funds be taken away. Recalcitrant state legislatures fell
quickly into line.

The Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway
safety agencies, advises its members not to adopt drug-impaired driving
laws at all for the time being.

"There has been little to no evaluation as to their effectiveness," said
spokesman Jonathan Adkins. "Most drivers who are drug impaired are also
alcohol-impaired."