Porter to push for all states to punish drug DUIs

Kirsten Searer

Tuesday, March 9, 2004 | 10:53 a.m.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., announced Monday he will push legislation requiring each state to set penalties for people who drive under the influence of drugs.

While all states have laws on the books to punish drunken drivers, only nine states, including Nevada, have laws that specifically address driving under the influence of drugs, Porter said.

Amid a backdrop of 147 trees planted at Sunset Park for people who have been killed by impaired drivers, Sandy Heverly, executive director of Stop DUI Nevada, said an estimated 8 million people drove under the influence of drugs in 2001 in the United States.

She said drug-impaired drivers are responsible for too many tragedies and too much "sorrow and grief that our neighbors go through."

Porter's bill would give states until 2006 to enact a law prohibiting people from driving under the influence of an illegal drug and setting a mandatory minimum penalty for people caught driving while high on illegal drugs.

States that don't comply would receive up to 50 percent less money for highway funds.

Porter said he became interested in the issue in 1997, when 8-year-old Brittany Faber of Henderson approached him for help.

Porter was a state senator representing Boulder City, and Brittany was upset that the man who killed her father while under the influence of marijuana had received just a few months of house arrest.

Brittany's dad, William Faber, had just dropped her off at school when he was struck by the driver going 85 mph in a 45-mph zone, said Brittany, who is now 15 years old. The accident happened at 6:30 in the morning.

Now people caught driving under the influence of drugs in Nevada face stricter regulations, Brittany said, and she hopes that other states will enact similar policies.

She feels she is honoring the memory of her dad, a computer programmer who she said was "pretty much the smartest person I've ever known."

Sixty percent of the approximately 600 people arrested so far this year for driving under the influence in Clark County were under the influence of drugs, Sheriff Bill Young said.

Officers use several methods to determine if someone is high on marijuana, including taking samples of blood and interviewing suspects, Young said.

The Nevada law is under fire in court, however, with the accuracy and appropriateness of its approach being questioned.

Porter said there needs to be more research done to find ways to test people for the amount of drugs in their system, he said. Porter's bill also would allocate federal funds to research the prevention and detection of drug use.

In 1990, about 6 percent of all driving fatalities involved drug use, according to the Nevada Office of Traffic Safety which also notes that in the last few years, about 18 percent of fatalities have involved drug use.

Erin Breen, director of the Safe Community Partnership program at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said at Monday's announcement that the rising number of drug-related rates should convince people in Nevada not to support the proposed constitutional amendment that would allow adults to carry small amounts of marijuana.

"We don't need another substance legalized in the state of Nevada so more people can drive on our roads impaired," said Breen, whose program has researched the effects of marijuana and other drugs on drivers.

Jennifer Knight, a spokeswoman for the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana, said Breen's criticism doesn't take into account several key points in the amendment, including that it would increase the punishments for driving under the influence of marijuana.

"And under a system of strict regulation, people who use marijuana will only be allowed to use it at home," Knight said. "That's unlike alcohol, where most people who are driving under the influence of alcohol are doing it out of necessity to drive home from a club or a bar."

Some family members of people killed in accidents involving drugs said they hope Porter's bill will lend more visibility to the issue of driving while on all types of drugs.

Bill McCandless, a recently retired Las Vegas firefighter, was driving at about 8 a.m. when a man high on methamphetamine crashed into his car and killed him in 2002.

His wife, Cheryl, and daughter, Julie, attended Monday's news conference, along with Lily, the 10-month-old granddaughter that Bill McCandless never met.

"People don't realize that it's exactly the same thing if you're impaired on alcohol as it is drugs," Julie McCandless said.