You Are Going Directly to Jail
DUID Legislation: What It Means,
Who's Behind It, and Strategies to Prevent It
by Paul Armentano
Senior Policy Analyst
NORML | NORML Foundation
paul@norml.org
There's
a new front in law enforcement's self-proclaimed "War
on Drugs" and its name is DUID.
DUID, short for "driving under
the influence of drugs," is the new buzzword among politicians
and police -- however, in this case, words can be deceiving.
Though billed by its sponsors as a necessary tool to crack
down on "drugged driving" offenses,1 in reality,
DUID laws -- in particular "zero tolerance" per
se laws -- have virtually nothing to do with promoting public
safety or identifying motorists who drive while impaired.
Rather, the enactment and enforcement of zero tolerance DUID
legislation is a direct and calculated assault on the lives
and liberties of marijuana smokers, many of whom are just
now beginning to feel the laws' effects.
"Every state needs
a law ... defining, in essence, a crime divorced from impairment;
... that says if you use an illicit drug and drive, you have
broken the law. ... We need to treat DUID as important [an
offense] as murder, rape, and child molestation."
-- John Bobo,
Director, National Traffic Law Center. "Enforcement and
Prosecution of Drugged Driving Laws," speech given February
23, 2004
"Current research does
not enable one to predict with confidence whether a driver
testing positive for a drug, even at some measured level of
concentration, was actually impaired by that drug at the time
of crash."
-- US Department
of Transportation. State of Knowledge of Drug-Impaired
Driving: FINAL REPORT, September 2003
"The American public
does not yet realize that driving under the influence of drugs
is a problem at least as big as drunken driving. ... There
are two appropriate action steps: Routine roadside tests for
recent drug use [and] the universal application to all drivers
of the per se standard currently applied to the nation's
12 million commercial drivers."
-- Robert L. Dupont.
"Drugs and driving." Letter to the editor: USA Today.
October 28, 2004
"Drug tests detect
drug use but not impairment. A positive test result, even
when confirmed, only indicates that a particular substance
is present in the test subject's body tissue. It does not
indicate abuse or addiction; recency, frequency, or amount
of use; or impairment."
-- US Department
of Justice. Drugs, Crime, and the Justice System.
December 1992
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