Just putting in my thoughts. Even driving with the SCS on is considered driving impaired. My son, who is an attorney. stated that he would probably have a hard time defending a case like this (he specializes in criminal defense). I absolutly refuse to drive with my precious grandson. Lisa

Alt,
After reading your original post I need to chime in.
Your attorney is right but also flat wrong. I used to be a trucker and I know the D.O.T. prohibits driving while taking certain drugs even if prescribed. I also know some drivers do it anyway. That don't make it right!
If a drug effects your ability to operate a vehicle in a safe manner you're liable to get a D.U.I. This is one reason that you have to have a prescription drug in it's original container. If the drug is unsafe to operate a vehicle or machinery it's labeled so. And they do check, trust me...

Maybe they differ depending on the particualr medication and state laws. I don't recall ever seeing a label that says, "unsafe to operate a vehicle or machinery" (but they could exist); around here the wording is, "Use care when operating a car or dangerous machinery" which is open to broader interpretation.

Doc

Thank you for everyone's thoughts on my issue. I agree with everyone's thoughts good and bad. Delaware law says if you get caught its a DUI and I am not going to risk loosing even more then I have already lost. Nor will I have a guilty consciouness about hurting someone else or worse killing them or myself.

I don't know if I can get another attorney, being that I have had this one for a little over 2 years. But this week, as really made me think of whether he has my best interest at hand.

Thanks again. Anita

From the National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIDA InfoFacts: Drugged Driving, What is Drugged Driving?

Some States (Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin) have passed “per se” laws, in which it is illegal to operate a motor vehicle if there is any detectable level of a prohibited drug, or its metabolites, in the driver’s blood. Other State laws define “drugged driving” as driving when a drug “renders the driver incapable of driving safely” or “causes the driver to be impaired.”

In addition, 44 States and the District of Columbia have implemented Drug Evaluation and Classification Programs, designed to train police officers as Drug Recognition Experts. Officers learn to detect characteristics in a person’s behavior and appearance that may be associated with drug intoxication. If the officer suspects drug intoxication, a blood or urine sample is submitted to a laboratory for confirmation.

Check out the full article, it's pretty good, and current through December, 2010, although it would have been nice if it included a list of the prohibited drugs in the 17 "per se states." http://www.drugabuse.gov/Infofacts/driving.html

I for one am happy not to live in a "per se state." Meaning, I believe, that it remains the state's burden to prove impairment. Hence the officer training to record (among other things) behavioral evidence of impairment/intoxication.

Mike

PS to Anita: please note that Delaware appears, in fact, to be a per se state. If this is correct, I don't know where your attorney could possibly have been coming from.

PPS For those of you who do live in "per se states," it would be good to know to how many of your pain management physicians (or pharmacists) advised you of that fact, before handing out presumably "prohibited" drugs.

See the following for a list of prohibited drugs in "per se" states.
http//druggeddriving.org/legal.html.

Sorry Mike-sounds like California is next.

Having a prescribed drug doesn't release you from being responsible...

I wasn't trying to say that. Only that after ten years at this, with a 20 mg. Oxycontin at night, 10 mg. of Baclofen and 0.5 mg of Xanax (a bezodiazipine) in the morning, offset by a mere 400 mg. of Provigil, I KNOW I am not impaired for driving that morning in the least, and my doctors concur. Now, 600 mg. of Neurontin (which probably doesn't even make most lists) and a glass of wine would be another story altogether.

To criminalize driving with merely a measurable amount of any legal drug in your bloodstream, without regard to the actual concentration, is insane!

Mike

I'm sorry, but the site appears to be of dubious value, where its principal authority is a publication of the American Prosecutors Research Institute ("produced thanks to a charitable contribution from the Anheuser-Busch Foundation"). http://www.ndaa.org/pdf/drug_toxicol...ecutors_04.pdf Of course a per se standard is the easiest way of assuring prosecutions, but it's built on an assumption that's not supported by the medical literature: that any measurable amount of certain drugs in your system makes you an unsafe diver. But the only reason they take the position in the first place is because they don't want to go to the burden and expense of setting precise limits through verified medical studies standards and relatively exacting testing, in order to set and enforce limits, as we have done with alcohol. And, as set forth below, Nevada has apparently done with certain NON-OPIOID controlled substances.

But a matter of convenience to the state does not make a criminal statute constitutional in the presence of a less intrusive alternative. And none of this web-site's cited cases on constitutionality are to the contrary, or for that matter, have anything to do with per se standards.

Finally, having looked at what little was in their link, I highly doubt that California will be next to take the plunge. And if it did, it would be my pleasure to be part of a class action seeking immediate declaratory relief on the federal constitutional question in the courts of the Ninth Circuit. And to that end, based on the table Ballerina kindly brings to our attention http://druggeddriving.org/legal.html#table please note that Nevada's statute is ANYTHING BUT PER SE: it lists the specific concentrations of each drug that would put someone over the limit, even heroin!!!

DITTO OHIO AND VIRGINIA!!!

Mike

PS And just so there is no misunderstanding, I'm not disagreeing with a friend, only her cited authority.

This was my point when I said you can find articles to support any position.

I don't know how they could even go about setting limits based on amounts of certain drugs in someone's system. It's not just the presence, and it's not the amount either; it's the effect it has on the person's judgment, reflexes, cognitive functions, etc. Abusers/recreational users (those using for the "high" or psychotropic effect) are the real problem - not legitimate pain patients with established tolerance. Impairment can also stem from emotional stress, fatigue (lack of sleep), pain.

It would make more sense to devise a portable field simulator to test driving ability, but that might open the political hotspot of re-testing elderly drivers, and that may be getting a little

Doc