Family Life

01.30.12 | Sarah Harnisch

You have heard about driving drunk. But what about--- driving drugged? Senator Charles Schumer is proposing federal grants be used for research and to train police to identify the rising number of drivers operating under the influence of drugs. Schumer says drugged driving arrests rose 35-percent in New York since 2001. There were 22-hundred drugged driving cases in 2011 alone, not including those who were identified at the same time they were drinking and charged with a D.W.I., and Schumer says he believes that's just a fraction of the cases that are actually out there. He says the explosion of abuse of prescription drugs means the dangerous driving is done far more often, but police need the tools and training to identify it.