Drug-driving: A new menace on road, police in deep abyss

HYDERABAD:It took a long time for police in Indian cities to get the mechanism to catch drunk drivers. Now, as driving under the influence of illegal and prescription drugs rises, police find themselves behind on the tech curve once again, with no mechanism in place to catch drug users at the wheel.

“Cannabis, LSD, MDMA or Ecstasy, hashish and cocaine are among the drugs being seized in the city.But the only way to detect narcotic traces in a driver is through a blood sample. We can only book someone if found in possession of drugs, or buying it or in the act of consuming it,” said K Pavan Kumar, assistant excise superintendent, enforcement wing of Telangana prohibition and excise department.
Drugs can severely impact a user’s perceptual and motor skills, delaying reaction and information processing time, say experts. It can be a deadly problem if user is driving. Road safety experts pointed out that even legal drugs prescribed by doctors to treat common medical conditions affect the performance of the driver. “Amphetamines or stimulants used to treat hyperactivity or obesity impact a driver’s motor performance. According to the World Health Organisation, the risk of a fatal crash among those who have used amphetamines is five times higher than among non-users,” said Vinod K Kanumala, CEO of Indian Federation of Road Safety.
Till June this year, Delhi Police caught 1.5 lakh drunk drivers. Drug users, though, are a different matter. “We can detect drug-using drivers visually, or through smell. If they are caught, they can be booked under the Narcotics, Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act,” said Alok Kumar, Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Delhi.
Without technology, police can do very little to catch drug users during checks. “Currently, we can only seek a test of narcotics content in the system of a person if he is involved in an accident,” said Anil Kumar, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Hyderabad.
In Chandigarh, police said the mechanism for catching users on road was complicated. “We can only send blood and urine samples for testing. There is no other method,” said a Chandigarh Police officer.
The window of time to detect the drug while driving is very small, since drug gets absorbed in the bloodstream soon after consumption, officers said. The problem is not existing laws, which specify tough action against users. Additional director-general of Punjab Police Harpreet Singh Sidhu, special principal secretary to the chief minister and earlier head of the anti-drug STF, said, “A drug user can be booked under section 27 of NDPS Act, and can be imprisoned for a year.”
Punjab ADGP (traffic) Sharad Satya Chauhan said, “It might be difficult to assess if driver has taken drugs, but police can easily make out a user from his physical appearance. In addition to NDPS Sections, we can also invoke Section 279 (rash and negligent driving) of the IPC.”
In a measure which could show other states the way forward, catching drivers on drugs might become easier with Telangana’s new road safety bill, currently being drafted, said T Krishna Prasad, DGP and chairman, Road Safety Authority, Telangana. “We are now looking at when to subject someone to a drug test since it involves taking a blood sample. We are taking legal opinions on the circumstances under which we can ask somebody to cooperate in taking a sample,” added Prasad.