THE BRAINS ON DRUGS
Local police increasingly rely on trained drug recognition experts to detect impaired drivers
OO1SOC.(T – After he nearly barreled into a work crew at a repair zone on iamond ill 5oad, the motor ist freely admitted he’d been smoking mariMuana that day.
e was an older gentleman who worked in construction and he suffered from chronic pain,” recalled Officer Michael Martinsen. e was very co operative.”
e was also too stoned to operate a motor vehicle safely – at least in Mar tinsen’s opinion. hich matters more than that of most police officers on the oonsocket Police epartment – or the state, for that matter.
That’s because Martinsen is certified as a rug 5ecognition ( pert. State wide, only about 80 police officers are recognized as 5(s.
ike Martinsen, they’ve under gone specialized training to determine whether a motorist is impaired by a substance other than alcohol. They look for specific visual cues and other information, including coordination, pupil size, and even blood pressure, to determine whether someone should be charged with driving under the influ ence of drugs, and often they testify
in court as prosecutors try to prove the charge.
When a motorist is suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol, police may get help from a Breathalyzer to determine whether the concentration of alcohol in their system is above or below the legal driving limit of . grams per milliliters of blood. No similar device exists for marijuana. And even if it did, state lawmakers would still have make a political calculation about what the limit should be to drive legally.
As the recreational marijuana industry blossoms in neighboring Massachusetts, this is a legal breachway that will inevitably see far more traffic in the future – particularly in border towns like 3awtucket, Woonsocket and others, says Woonsocket 3olice Chief Thomas F. Oates.
Many police chiefs are
concerned that the proliferation of recreational marijuana shops will result in an increase in motorists impaired by ingesting cannabis in one form or another, potentially putting other motorists and pedestrians at risk.
“It’s a big concern for police chiefs,” he said. “The concern is the operation of motor vehicles while under the influence and the fact that now marijuana will be so easily accessible, it’s just another substance that people will be taking and driving.”
A Breathalyzer-like device for cannabis would certainly make the jobs of police officers easier in the new era of legal weed, but for now Oates says “we’re going to have to deal with it the best we can.”
That’s where the DREs come in.
“They’re important now but down the road they’re going to become invaluable because they’re going to be the only tool that we have for purposes of identifying people under the influence of narcotics, one being marijuana,” said Oates.
Down the road might not be that far away. The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission just granted a retail marijuana license to Caroline’s Cannabis in Uxbridge, Mass. The address is Douglas St. – also known as Route – which is about a mile from the state line. The shop is expected to open in March.
Caroline’s Cannabis is the first retail pot shop to open anywhere in the Blackstone 9alley. But the CCC is considering licenses for five more in the region, including two additional stores in Uxbridge, two in Blackstone and one in Millville.
Arguing that legal marijuana in the Bay State means
Rhode Island will inherit all the problems and none of the benefits, Gov. Gina Raimondo has proposed legislation to legalize recreational marijuana during the current session of the General Assembly. Legislative leaders in both the Senate and the ouse have – so far, anyway – given the governor’s proposal a lukewarm reception.
Even if Rhode Island doesn’t follow Massachusetts’s lead on recreational cannabis, Martinsen sees a wider role for DRE’s in the future.
“I think our role is going to become more important in the sense that it’s going to be necessary to utilize our position more in the sense of trying to determine someone’s impairment,” he said. “There’s no defined limit when it comes to someone driving under the influence of a drug. There’s no definitive number like there is with alcohol. So we have to be able to prove impairment.”
CANDIDATES FOR certification as DREs must have at least three years of police experience and a demonstrable track record of drunk driving enforcement before they can even be considered, said Martinsen. They must also make a five-year commitment to promoting other aspects of the DRE program’s formal campaign for safe driving.
Another prerequisite is the completion of a two-day course known as ARIDE, for Advanced Roadside Impaired Driving Enforcement, which is given periodically all around the country. The course is a primer for police officers in how to spot individuals who are under the influence of multiple classes of controlled pharmacological
agents, from hallucinogenic drugs like LSD and stimulants like Adderall to heroin and – yes – cannabis, which is considered a class unto itself.
Only then may DRE candidates enroll in the two-week certification course, which includes a week of classroom work and a week in the field, some of which Martinsen experienced in Maricopa County, Az. That’s famed Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s territory, a border region where DRE candidates have an opportunity to observe individuals who fall into the custody of law enforcement under the influence of all sorts of different drugs.
“It’s the hardest training I’ve ever gone through as a police officer,” said Martinsen. “There’s math. There’s biology. There’s chemistry and everything that goes along with the makeup of the body and how people metabolize different types of drugs. ou take a little bit of the EMT world and you put it in the police world.”
While the state sets a limit for how much alcohol may be in one’s system to drive legally, Martinsen’s mantra about safe driving under the influence of any mind-altering substance is that he’s not particularly interested in how much – or how little – is in the system of a motorist who falls under suspicion.
What matters most to him is whether he can detect signs that the motorist is impaired – poor coordination, dilated pupils, elevated blood pressure – among other things.
Some people may be able to consume more than others and still drive safely, he says.
“Everybody metabolizes drugs differently,’ he says.
“Everybody metabolizes alcohol differently. Everybody’s makeup, whether you’re male or female – gender doesn’t matter – it’s how you metabolize the substance in your body. Just because you have the drug in your body doesn’t mean you’re impaired to drive.”
Martinsen isn’t opposed to legalizing recreational marijuana. In fact, he says he’s good friends with the owner of Caroline’s Cannabis. They have friendly discussions about what’s safe consumption and what’s not all the time.
But there’s little doubt in his mind that the proliferation of retail shops in nearby Massachusetts will send a flock of Rhode Islanders across the border to import legal weed for their own use back home. From his perspective as a policeman, marijuana that originates from a licensed vendor who is compelled to heed state-regulated quality control benchmarks is probably a better option than unregulated street weed.
“With the stuff that’s out there, the stuff from the dispensaries I consider safe more so than something you’re buying off the street,” he says. “Now it’s not the stuff you’re buying from some stranger that could be laced with fentanyl. It could be laced with Zanax...anything, to make it more potent.”
Not everyone is a fan of DRE’s, however. Criminal defense lawyer Mark Smith of North Smithfield, dismisses their work as “junk science” and doesn’t consider their testimony to be particularly useful in trying to prove a charge of driving under the influence of drugs.
“There are a variety of different reasons and causes
that a person’s reaction may be positive,” says Smith. “I just don’t put any faith in it at all.”
No doubt, said Smith, the rise of legal marijuana will generate criminal cases involving motor vehicles that involve serious injury or death. In those cases, it’s almost a given that police will draw blood from the suspect and it will be laboratory-tested for drugs, and the testimony about the results will come from a physician or technician.
Those are the “easy” cases for the police to prove, says Smith. The marginal ones – a simple case of erratic driving where a DRE’s observations are the only proof – will almost certainly be tougher.
“Of course you’re going to see more of them and they’re tough cases to prove,” says Smith.
3erhaps one day a device like the Breathalyzer will be invented to make prosecuting those cases easier, said Smith.
Oates would certainly welcome such an invention. But until such a device comes into mainstream police use, he says the best tool available to determine whether motorists are impaired by marijuana is the DRE.
The department has two, including Officer Jason Berthelette, and Oates wishes he had more. But in order to beef up the contingent of DRE’s the department would have to identify a source of funds to make the training available.
“Even if the training is free, positions have to be backfilled, and it’s an expense to the department,” he said.