'DRUGGED DRIVING' IS THE NEW DUI

Lab Backlog Chokes System

PIKEVILLE - His new pickup was doing 81 mph, and Charles Christopher Morris
was also flying -- on prescription drugs -- when he plowed into a family's
vehicle and killed a pregnant woman and her full-term fetus.

Morris later tested positive for what a state police detective described as
a "drug cocktail": painkillers, anti-anxiety medications, muscle relaxants
and amphetamines.

When Morris pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges in the March 2001 death
of Veronica Jane Thornsbury, 22, he had already become part of a deadly trend.

Eastern Kentucky's raging prescription-drug problem has changed the face of
DUI.

It's not just for drunks anymore.

"Everybody you're looking at now is a pill head," said former Martin County
Sheriff Darriel Young, who left office last month.

"In the last couple of years, it's gotten a whole lot worse. Everybody's
pilling," Young said.

County after county, particularly in Eastern Kentucky, has seen explosive
growth in "drugged" driving, a signal that the abuse of narcotics now
rivals -- or even surpasses -- the abuse of alcohol.

"Hell, the day of the old-fashioned drunks on the road is about over," said
Flatwoods Police Chief Buddy Gallion.

Gallion said more than half of his DUI arrests now involve drugs.

Last June, 24 of 27 DUI cases in Martin District Court involved drugs, not
alcohol, court records show.

In 2000, Martin, Laurel and Clay became the first Kentucky counties in
which drug-related DUI charges outnumbered alcohol-related DUIs, state
records show.

Local officials say the change has created new problems.

Quick, easy Breathalyzer tests, routine in drunken-driving arrests, will
not work in drug cases.

Instead, drivers' blood samples must go to the state crime lab, where a
nine-month backlog jeopardizes prosecutions in some counties.

Cases dismissed

Clay County Attorney Clay Bishop Jr. said that more than a few drug-related
DUIs have been dismissed because of delayed test results.

State court officials have recommended that DUI cases be processed within
60 to 90 days, Bishop said.

"We try to leave it on the docket for as long as possible, but after nine
or 10 months, if a defense attorney is worth anything he'll move to
dismiss," Bishop said. "I have to object, of course, but sometimes the
judge will overrule me -- and I can't blame him."

The Kentucky State Police crime lab has a backlog of about 6,000
drug-identification cases that will take about nine months to process, said
Lt. Lisa Rudzinski, an agency spokeswoman.

The last General Assembly approved the hiring of 25 new lab analysts,
Rudzinski said. Eleven were hired before tight budgets forced a state
government job freeze, she said.

"We anticipate that backlog to diminish, depending on what happens to the
budget when the legislature meets," she said.

State quit counting

Though state records show significant growth in drug-related DUIs across
Kentucky during the late '90s, the problem was particularly acute in
Eastern Kentucky.

In 2000, one out of every three motorists stopped on a first-offense DUI in
Eastern Kentucky was alleged to be impaired by drugs, not alcohol.

In the rest of the state, the figure was one out of every 10.

No one can say how the situation has changed since then.

Until 2000, the state police and the Administrative Office of the Courts
kept track of drugged driving by using different codes to separate
first-offense DUI arrests into two categories: drugs and alcohol.

It is unclear why the two codes were merged into one that year.

Rudzinski of the state police said she assumed that the separate codes were
dropped in 2000 when the legislature adopted a new law that lowered the
legal blood-alcohol limit for drivers from 0.10 to 0.08.

But Rep. Rob Wilkey, D-Franklin, a co-sponsor of that bill, said any code
change was made by bureaucrats -- and not because the law required it.

Wilkey said he expects to "fix" a few things in the new DUI law during the
current legislative session, and he said he might seek to return to keeping
track of drug- and alcohol-related charges by using separate codes.