PORTER TO PUSH FOR ALL STATES TO PUNISH DRUG DUIS

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., announced Monday he will push legislation
requiring each state to set penalties for people who drive under the
influence of drugs.

While all states have laws on the books to punish drunken drivers,
only nine states, including Nevada, have laws that specifically
address driving under the influence of drugs, Porter said.

Amid a backdrop of 147 trees planted at Sunset Park for people who
have been killed by impaired drivers, Sandy Heverly, executive
director of Stop DUI Nevada, said an estimated 8 million people drove
under the influence of drugs in 2001 in the United States.

She said drug-impaired drivers are responsible for too many tragedies
and too much "sorrow and grief that our neighbors go through."

Porter's bill would give states until 2006 to enact a law prohibiting
people from driving under the influence of an illegal drug and setting
a mandatory minimum penalty for people caught driving while high on
illegal drugs.

States that don't comply would receive up to 50 percent less money for
highway funds.

Porter said he became interested in the issue in 1997, when 8-year-old
Brittany Faber of Henderson approached him for help.

Porter was a state senator representing Boulder City, and Brittany was
upset that the man who killed her father while under the influence of
marijuana had received just a few months of house arrest.

Brittany's dad, William Faber, had just dropped her off at school when
he was struck by the driver going 85 mph in a 45-mph zone, said
Brittany, who is now 15 years old. The accident happened at 6:30 in
the morning.

Now people caught driving under the influence of drugs in Nevada face
stricter regulations, Brittany said, and she hopes that other states
will enact similar policies.

She feels she is honoring the memory of her dad, a computer programmer
who she said was "pretty much the smartest person I've ever known."

Sixty percent of the approximately 600 people arrested so far this
year for driving under the influence in Clark County were under the
influence of drugs, Sheriff Bill Young said.

Officers use several methods to determine if someone is high on
marijuana, including taking samples of blood and interviewing
suspects, Young said.

The Nevada law is under fire in court, however, with the accuracy and
appropriateness of its approach being questioned.

Porter said there needs to be more research done to find ways to test
people for the amount of drugs in their system, he said. Porter's bill
also would allocate federal funds to research the prevention and
detection of drug use.

In 1990, about 6 percent of all driving fatalities involved drug use,
according to the Nevada Office of Traffic Safety which also notes that
in the last few years, about 18 percent of fatalities have involved
drug use.

Erin Breen, director of the Safe Community Partnership program at
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said at Monday's announcement that
the rising number of drug-related rates should convince people in
Nevada not to support the proposed constitutional amendment that would
allow adults to carry small amounts of marijuana.

"We don't need another substance legalized in the state of Nevada so
more people can drive on our roads impaired," said Breen, whose
program has researched the effects of marijuana and other drugs on
drivers.

Jennifer Knight, a spokeswoman for the Committee to Regulate and
Control Marijuana, said Breen's criticism doesn't take into account
several key points in the amendment, including that it would increase
the punishments for driving under the influence of marijuana.

"And under a system of strict regulation, people who use marijuana
will only be allowed to use it at home," Knight said. "That's unlike
alcohol, where most people who are driving under the influence of
alcohol are doing it out of necessity to drive home from a club or a
bar."

Some family members of people killed in accidents involving drugs said
they hope Porter's bill will lend more visibility to the issue of
driving while on all types of drugs.

Bill McCandless, a recently retired Las Vegas firefighter, was driving
at about 8 a.m. when a man high on methamphetamine crashed into his
car and killed him in 2002.

His wife, Cheryl, and daughter, Julie, attended Monday's news
conference, along with Lily, the 10-month-old granddaughter that Bill
McCandless never met.

"People don't realize that it's exactly the same thing if you're
impaired on alcohol as it is drugs," Julie McCandless said.