Your License, Your Urine

By Paul Armentano, AlterNet. Posted June 21, 2004.

Imagine if it were against the law to drive home after consuming a single glass of wine at dinner. Now imagine it is illegal to drive after having consumed a single glass of wine two weeks ago. Guess what? If you smoke pot, it's time to stop imagining.

Legislation weaving its way through the US Congress demands all 50 states pass laws granting police the power to drug test drivers and arrest anyone found to have "any detectable amount of a controlled substance ... present in the person's body, as measured in the person's blood, urine, saliva, or other bodily substance." Though the expressed purpose of the law is to target and remove drug-impaired drivers from US roadways, the proposal would do nothing of the sort.

Most troubling, the proposed law -- H.R. 3922 -- does not require motorists to be identifiably impaired or intoxicated in order to be criminally charged with the crime of "drugged driving." Rather, police have only to demonstrate that the driver has detectable levels of illicit drugs or inactive drug metabolites in their blood, sweat, saliva or urine. As many pot smokers know, marijuana metabolites are fat soluble, and remain identifiable in the urine for days and sometimes even weeks after past use. Consequently someone who smoked a joint on Monday could conceivably be arrested on Friday and charged with "drugged driving," even though they are perfectly sober!

Here's how the law would work. Police, at their discretion, could order motorists during a traffic stop to undergo a drug test, most likely a urine test. If the driver's urine tests positive for prior pot use then he or she would automatically be charged and eventually found guilty of the criminal offense of driving under the influence of drugs -- even if the pot in question was consumed weeks earlier. Under the law, the fact that the driver is not impaired is irrelevant; the only "evidence" necessary is the positive test result.

So Who's Behind This?

Over the past five years, a small cabal of prohibitionists, drug testing proponents and toxicologists have pushed for legislation criminalizing drivers who operate a vehicle with inert drug metabolites present in their system. To date, their efforts have persuaded ten states -- Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah and Wisconsin -- to pass such "drugged driving" laws, known as zero-tolerance per se laws. Leading this charge is the Walsh Group, a federally funded organization that develops drug testing technology and lobbies for rigid workplace drug testing programs. Walsh Group President, Michael Walsh, is the former Director of the Division of Applied Research at the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and formerly served as the Associate Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), informally known as the Drug Czar's office

In November 2002, the group partnered with the ONDCP to lobby state legislatures to amend their drugged driving laws. Every state has laws on the books prohibiting motorists from driving "under the influence" of a controlled substance. Like drunk driving laws, virtually all of these laws require the motorists to be impaired by their drug use in order to be charged with "drugged driving."

Nevertheless, the Walsh Group argued that these existing laws are too lax on illicit drug users. To bolster their claim, they argued -- without explanation -- that actually linking illicit drug use to impaired driving is a "technically complicated and difficult task." Their solution? States should enact zero tolerance per se laws redefining "drugged drivers" as any motorist who tests positives for any level of illicit drugs or drug metabolites, regardless of whether their driving is impaired.

Paul Armentano is the senior policy analyst for The NORML Foundation in Washington, DC.