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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