Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: New deadly drug report

Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2002 | 9:01 a.m.

QUESTIONS 2 AND 9, like no other initiatives on Nevada's 2002 general election ballot, brought forth personal attacks.

Q 9, promoting the wide legal use of marijuana in the Silver State, resulted in Nevadans asking about the promoters of this constitutional change. It was a very expensive campaign funded by billionaire Peter Lewis and run by Billy Rogers from Texas. In short order Rogers, a glib charmer, shook off the carpetbagger label and Lewis really didn't give a tinker's damn about what Nevadans thought about his monied crusade. Thousands of Nevada voters have lived here five years or less, so the carpetbagger cry about Rogers had no impact on their thinking.

Attacks on people opposing Q 9 also surfaced, with Sheriff Jerry Keller, Sandy Heverly of STOP DUI and Chief Deputy D.A. Gary Booker being the main targets. The popular Keller was immune to the attacks and Heverly, a tough lady, had fought and won other battles to protect us from dangerous drivers. This left Booker to absorb several blows below the belt. For several years he has been successfully carrying out the prosecutorial role demanded by the people who have lost loved ones in bloody highway accidents.

Booker, unafraid of the criticism, came to believe that his presence in the fight might detract from the message he wanted voters to receive. He saw the message as being more important than the messenger so he stepped aside for a new leader. At the time it was the right action to take, but there is good reason to believe Nevada voters weren't about to buy into the marijuana-in-every-home promotion. Despite the slick promotions in support of Q 9, the voices of responsible Nevadans such as Keller, Heverly and Booker had been heard.

Just last week, nine days after the demise of Q 9 in Nevada, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a devastating report about drugs and highway accidents. It calls for all states to adopt criminal laws setting standards on the presence of drugs in a driver's body. Nevada already has a head start on this kind of law, which Booker has used successfully in our courts. Among several improvements can be the additional use of a rapid immunoassay urinalysis test for marijuana and cocaine at the scene of a reckless driving arrest where alcohol is not evident. In Memphis, Tenn., according to a 1994 report in the New England Journal of Medicine, this test resulted in 59 percent testing positive, with 33 percent of them testing positive for marijuana alone.

The report released last week says that a national survey "indicates that in a 12-month period nearly 9 million Americans drove within two hours of using marijuana or cocaine, but current law in most U.S. states makes it difficult to identify, prosecute, or treat drugged drivers."

The news release for the report of 120 pages goes on to quote its lead author, Dr. Michael Walsh of the Walsh Group, saying, "Driving under the influence of drugs, other than alcohol, has become a significant problem, but drugged drivers are not detected as often as drunk drivers. There is a lack of uniformity in the way state laws approach drugged driving, there are no national standards for testing drugged drivers, and too few police officers are trained to detect drivers who may be under the influence of drugs."

The executive summary of the report emphasizes, "The bottom line is that the current driving under the influence of illegal drugs (DUID) statutes in most states do not support or encourage enforcement and prosecution of DUID laws. As the problem of substance abuse in the nation is significant, there is clearly a need for national leadership at the Federal level to develop model statutes and to strongly encourage the States to modify their laws to be more effective.""