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The WSP knows which drugs you're on

July 23, 2012 @ 6:32 pm (Updated: 9:50 am - 7/24/12 )

Listen to Elite State Patrol troopers know which drugs you're on

TV shows and movies have taught us how drunk drivers behave when an officer pulls them over. They stumble while trying to walk a straight line and struggle to touch their nose with their finger. What does a drugged driver - someone impaired by something other than alcohol - act like?

There are about 200 officers in Washington, who are trained to know which drug a person is using, just by observing them.

Washington State Patrol Sergeant Mark Crandall is Drug Recognition Expert and a DRE trainer. In his 20 years as a trooper he's seen thousands of people who use prescription or illegal drugs, then drive. Some of them are high on a combination of things.

"I arrested a painter who was inside a closed container. After work he had a couple of beers and was driving home about 4 a.m. The beers mixed with the fumes, he was high as a kite. By the time I got him out of the car, I saw him starting to inhale fresh air and watched him become sober," Crandall says.

Marijuana, Methamphetamine and Oxycodone are the top three drugs used by those who've been pulled over so far in 2012.

"We find people who are using stuff off the shelf, the huffers, the recreational drug users who take something for a feeling, illegal drugs, the underground drugs, the heroin and meth," says Crandall. "When you ask what we're encountering, I always say what can you imagine? It can be anything."

white vehicle crash The blood alcohol limit for drunk driving is .08 percent in Washington.

Officers can measure the BAC in a portable breath test that can be used at the roadside.

But there isn't an equivalent relationship between drugs and impairment levels.

Troopers don't have an on-the-spot test for suspected drugged drivers. A blood draw is needed, with results coming later from a lab.

For the officer's safety and others, it's important to figure out pretty quickly what kind of drugged-up person they're dealing with.

If a trooper suspects someone they've pulled over is on drugs, they can call for a DRE to analyze the driver.

The expert runs through a 12 step process, observing things like muscle tone.

"They can be really amped up and their muscles will be rigid and solid, or they'll be on heroin and they'll be loose and flaccid like Jello. We feel their arms, we have them make fists, and we feel their forearms, do they know the difference between flexing or not and can we see that," he says.

Behavior is a give away. Someone on meth will be "agitated, fidgety and hyped up" because it's a stimulant. Someone taking PCB might act like they have human strength or become paranoid.

Pupil dilation also tells them a lot. Ecstasy, cocaine, crack, meth, all dilate the eyes, which look totally black, barely any color shows. Heroin makes the pupils look like pin dots.

MarkCrandallDREs try to stay ahead of drug users by going online to figure out what people are using to get high and how the substance impacts their behavior.

"As we're trying to prohibit people from driving impaired on the highway, they're actually writing about how to get their best high," says Crandall.

"I visit those websites too, I look at it, I find it amazing what people will do to feel an effect or get high, to get an euphoric feeling or to make them sleep, or anything that effects their body."

The average state patrol officer pulls over between 1,500 and 1,700 drivers a year. The DREs have a high batting average for knowing what drug someone is on, confirmed by blood tests.

By LINDA THOMAS

Photos courtesy WSP of Sgt. Mark Crandall. Photo above is of a single-vehicle crash that killed three people in the vehicle - the 15 year old unlicensed driver, an 18 year old and a 22 year old. The vehicle left the road at over 100 mph and crashed into a pole. Cannabis was found in the driver’s blood toxicology and cause of crash was determined to be cannabis and speed.

More from Linda Thomas

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Comments (21)


  • Add A Comment

  • Ron_Spins wrote...
    And Law enforcement
    July 23, 2012 7:01 pm
    can tell when you are lying. About anything... and to top it off the Police Dog can do it even better.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • Newton wrote...
    High on drugs and Driving.
    July 23, 2012 8:44 pm
    I hope WSP is more advanced and go after those who do not follow the Constitution of the United States. All Contracts that are not Constitutional are Null and Void. Who is teach WSP about Consitutional law. Just like are Govermnet school system nobody.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • daveismenotyou wrote...
    Clever
    July 23, 2012 8:48 pm
    Awesome post. If meant to be so, bravo. It made me change my post five times.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • daveismenotyou wrote...
    Clever
    July 23, 2012 8:48 pm
    Awesome post. If meant to be so, bravo. It made me change my post five times.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • CH wrote...
    The WSP knows which drugs you're on . . . .
    July 24, 2012 4:22 am
    not in the 70's. Trust me I know first hand.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • Neo wrote...
    WSP knows ... ? KNOWS?
    July 24, 2012 5:55 am
    They know they've been trained. That's all they know. Everything after that, in the field for example, will be supposition until test demonstrate otherwise. I will want these "experts" to keep full record of their experience. Nah, won't work either. They control the data flow. Good luck...see you in court for profiling I bet'cha.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • hpygolkyone wrote...
    My Two Cents...........
    July 24, 2012 8:15 am
    If they required eye tracking software before being able to post a response on a blog......I'm sure A LOT of people on MyNW.com would go directly to jail after the pooooooolice saw the size of their pupils.

    Now shut up and tell me where you hid the Doritoes.

    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • ronzwrong wrote...
    Why is Washington So Far Behind the Rest of the U.S.
    July 24, 2012 8:29 am
    Why is the progressive, tech savvy, liberal Washington always so far behind on this type of thing. The redneck state of Texas had DRE's as far back as 12-15 years ago. You remember breath interlock devices being big news here a couple of years ago; another item that was "no news" many years ago in other states. I guess Washington is only progressive in their software and fish.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • It's me! Ha ha! wrote...
    Marijuana, Methamphetamine and Oxycodone are the top three drugs used by those who've been pulled over so far in 2012.
    July 24, 2012 9:55 am
    Hey Potheads! What happened to your argument that driving while high on MJ is not a bad thing. That it does not effect your driving? That there should be no such thing as DUI for smoking MJ? A safe drug!

    Even under the influence of so called Medical Marijuana?

    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • messiah101 wrote...
    Sorry
    July 24, 2012 11:23 am
    But if I was on a jury that had a police officer who had this type of training I would NOT accept his testimony,but if the jury was allowed to watch the officer watch a line up of various drug users and was able to ID (100%)which drug each was using then I could accept his testimony
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • messiah101 wrote...
    Does 80 hours of training
    July 24, 2012 11:30 am
    Actually make you an expert at anything?And why did the writer of the article refer to these officers with 2 weeks training as "ELITE"?
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • circuitfr wrote...
    messiah101
    July 24, 2012 12:22 pm
    It's not just the training, it's the fact the Troopers deal with thousands of dirt bag druggies in their career. Combine that training as a D.R.E also with training in drugs in general, combined with all the experience that you cannot teach, which is dealing with thousands of these people and yes, I can assure you, they are very good at what they do. It's not like D.R.E's haven't been around. State has had them for a while. All cops have training in drugs, dui, and recognition, this just takes it a step farther.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • Cougsfan34 wrote...
    Great
    July 24, 2012 12:30 pm
    Another tool for them to not use. As a person who spends 85% of my time in a field service truck, I see a lot of cra**p. I have seen people drinking and driving in the middle of the day. I call the State Patrol daily to report drunk drivers and nothing happens. I will follow a car to the exit they take while giving real time data on what the car is doing and where it is going. I have even asked the dispatch if they really care and the answer I got was "we try." Good luck catching all the drunks your doing a bang up job so far...
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • CH wrote...
    Hey Potheads! What happened to your argument that driving while high on MJ is not a bad thing? . . . .
    July 24, 2012 12:48 pm
    Its not a bad thing. Most can function on MJ. Clown[Republicans]like you can't function on water. A new study suggests that legalizing medical marijuana reduces traffic fatalities. The authors noted that legalizing marijuana reduces alcohol consumption, and people are more wary of driving high than drunk. Which drug is actually more dangerous on the road? Alcohol, and it’s not even close. It’s hard to directly compare alcohol and marijuana, because driving impairment depends on dosage and the two drugs tend to affect different skills. (Pot makes drivers worse at mindless tasks like staying in a lane, while alcohol undermines behaviors that require more attention like yielding to pedestrians or taking note of stop signs.) Nevertheless, Yale psychiatrist Richard Sewell reviewed the academic literature on driving while intoxicated in a 2009 article, and found that alcohol is significantly more dangerous. Real-world data from auto accidents indicate that a drunk driver is approximately 10 times more likely to cause a fatal accident than a stoned driver. In most studies, smoking one-third of a joint or less has virtually no impact on a driver’s performance. A couple of studies even suggest that pot smokers are less likely to cause an accident than sober drivers. It’s a little surprising that THC has such a small effect on driving. In experiments testing the skills required for driving—coordination, visual tracking, and reaction time—rather than driving itself, subjects under the influence of pot fare significantly worse than sober people. But when you put them behind the wheel of a driving simulator, tokers perform okay. Those who have taken in a moderate dose of the drug show minimal impairment, and very experienced smokers show almost no deficit at all. (Interestingly, habitual stoners are also better at driving drunk than ordinary people.) No one’s entirely sure how to explain these results. The dominant hypothesis is that people are more likely to be aware of—and, more importantly, compensate for—their intoxication when high than when drunk. Participants in one study who smoked one-third of a joint perceived themselves as being impaired, even though the experiment suggested they were not. By contrast, subjects who had two drinks thought they were fine, despite performing poorly in driving tests. In the driving simulators, pot smokers drove significantly slower than the drunk drivers, even with researchers reminding them to speed up. They also gave the car in front of them a lot more room and were less likely to pass. Alcohol, on the other hand, increases risk-taking behavior. Drunk drivers drive faster, tailgate, and pass recklessly.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • RonJ wrote...
    Which
    July 24, 2012 1:48 pm
    WSP officer can tell when I've licked a toad?
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }