USA Today has a story about drug tests done on drivers killed in crashes. The tests, reported in a study by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, detected metabolites of legal and illegal drugs in about 20% of the driver-corpses tested.
The NHTSA noted in its release that these numbers--and the increase they showed over previous investigations "indicate that drugs were found to be present in post-mortem examinations. Drug involvement does not necessarily imply impairment or indicate that drug use was the cause of the crash."
This important clarification was left out of the USA Today article. In fact, as Pete Guither pointed out in April, these kinds of data don't tell us anything at all about whether people are driving impaired at greater rates now than in the past.
Instead, this kind of dishonest focus on "drugged driving" represents mission creep on the part of organizations like MADD that have influence with the drug czar's office. The goal, as Pete also points out, is to create "per se" laws in the states which will define any drug metabolites in the body as legal evidence of impairment, "per se." As is well known, a plant like cannabis would then be defined as legally intoxicating for perhaps a month, since cannabinoid metabolites hang around in fat cells for some time after a person has completely come down.
Viewed in this light, the USA Today article, with its uncritical reproduction of the drug czar's angle on the issue, is a partner in the continuing abuse of reason waged in the name of the War on Drugs.
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