Washington – The federal government should help police departments nationwide obtain the tools and training needed to attack a rising scourge of driving under the influence, two U.S. senators said Sunday.
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Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Mark Pryor of Arkansas proposed that federal funding in a pending transportation funding bill be used for research and to train police. They said police have no equipment and few have training in identifying drugged drivers, who don’t show the same outward signs of intoxication as drunken drivers do, such as slurred speech.
“Cops need a Breathalyzer-like technology that works to identify drug-impaired drivers on-the-spot — before they cause irreparable harm,” Schumer said. “With the explosive growth of prescription drug abuse it’s vital that local law enforcement have the tools and training they need to identify those driving under the influence of narcotics to get them off the road.”
Schumer says drugged driving arrests rose 35 percent in New York since 2001, but he says that’s a fraction of the cases.
The Democrats cited a 2009 federal report in which 10.5 million Americans acknowledged that they had driven under the influence of drugs. Schumer said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that in a 2007 roadside survey, more than 16 percent of weekend and night-time drivers tested positive for illegal prescription drugs or over-the-counter drugs. Eleven percent of them were found to have taken illegal drugs.
The administration also found that a third of 12,055 drivers tested who died in car crashes in 2009 had used drugs.
Yet police have no approved equipment to help identify drugged drivers, though saliva tests are being researched.
Pryor wants to create federal grants so police can participate in programs that require up to 200 hours of instruction to detect drugged driving.
Schumer said the effort is prompted in part by two fatal December crashes in the New York City area in which two boys — one 5 years old and the other, 4 — died. Prescription drug abuse is being investigated in both cases.
“here we go again ” – the liberals led by schumer want to grow the government by creating a new sit-around -and-do nothing agency- to monitor our drug-prescriptions.
Driving remains in the domain of the state governments.your drivers license is issued by the state-now big-bro wants to encroach on that and further invade our privacy and liberty.the seeds of totalitarian government are begining to sprout.neither the federal government nor state government have a compelling interest in this matter-!!
Perhaps I misread. They are suggesting research into a standardized, repeatable test for drug impairment that can be used by local authorities.
PS: I do not drive after taking painkillers or statins, they seem to make me sleep. I really hope that any drivers has the same policy.
“the liberals led by schumer”. You really need to take some magnesium to control your knee jerks. It’s the Conservative, Right Wing, Echo Chamber that insists on being tough on crime and which never met a War, including the War on Drugs, that they didn’t promote. Well, to be honest, it’s also the Liberal, Left Wing, counterpart, too. In other words there’s a _huge_ industry pushing this battle. Look at all the pot arrests in NYC. At _huge_ direct money cost, and horrendous social costs.
there’s only one Presidential candidate who’s looking at this with an open eye, and he’s pretty far from the mainstream.
what about the drivers who did not take their diabetes medication, their psych drugs and their anti epileptics? People who are driving impaired because they did not take their medications are also a threat to safety.
And what about those who are taking a medication which has neurological side effects that they are not aware of?
I think that to a certain extent, we have to let the police officers decide who is impaired based upon behavior and not only chemical tests. That being said, it would be a good idea to train more officers to recognize the symptoms of diseases that are growing in the US which could impair a driver such as diabetes and neurological disorders. Not all impaired drivers are due to drugs.