“Drunk driving accidents, in my 30 years of law enforcement, I’ve seen more fatalities and more impact on families than I have in all the murder investigations that I’ve participated in,” says Lake Hallie Police Chief Cal Smokowicz.

The statistics are sobering.

“On average the last 10 years, we’ve had an average of 200 fatalities a year in drunk driving crashes in Wisconsin,” says Rep. Jim Ott (R-23^rd District).

Six new bills are being introduced in the legislature to try to drive down the number of OWI arrests. Among the changes: criminalizing all first offense with a blood alcohol content of 0.15 or above, making it a criminal misdemeanor, and making a 2^nd offense OWI a criminal misdemeanor.

Two other bills would add in minimum sentences for convicted drunk drivers who injured or killed someone while behind the wheel.

“Two other bills would establish minimum mandatory sentences. In one case we would have minimum mandatory sentences for causing injuries while OWI. Right now there are maximum sentences, but there are no minimum sentences, mandatory minimum sentences, so in reality, a judge could just let a person walk free without serving any jail time. This bill would require sentences ranging from six months to three years, depending on the severity of the injury that was caused. Another bill would establish a minimum mandatory sentence for homicide while OWI, right now the maximum sentences are between 25 and 40 years depending on whether or not it’s the first offense, but there’s no mandatory minimum,” says Rep. Ott.

Yet another bill would require an in-person appearance in court for a first offense OWI.

“Another bill would make 3rd offense a felony, which would mean it would be punishable by more than a year in prison,” says Rep. Ott.

And in the Village of Lake Hallie, that change would impact more than a quarter of their OWI arrests.

“We made 54 total drunk driving arrests last year in the Village of Lake Hallie, of that, you can see 15 of those were 3rd offense or greater,” says Chief Smokowicz.

Another change?

“Another bill would allow the seizure of vehicles for third offense and higher offenders, and that would be at the discretion of the judge,” says Rep. Ott.

Police departments could then sell the car and keep the profits to cover the cost of the seizure. But that has some smaller police departments, like Lake Hallie’s, concerned.

“We have to safeguard that vehicle, we either can have it placed in an impound lot and pay daily storage, or we move our squad cars out of our two garages and we park the squad cars with $20-30,000 worth of equipment outside and we park the defendant’s vehicle inside so no one steals their radio,” says Chief Smokowicz.

And allowing police to sell the vehicles, may not help much.

“We’ve had many vehicles out there that had no value or the value of the debt on the vehicle far exceeded the value of the vehicle, and so if the law says we have to seize these vehicles, what are we going to do with all these vehicles,” says Chief Smokowicz.

But lawmakers say the goal isn’t to make more work for police departments, it’s to make Wisconsin’s roads safer.

“We’re not trying to put more people in prison or jail or make them pay higher fines, the idea is to actually produce a deterrent to bad behavior, says Rep. Ott.

Those six bills have been circulated for co-sponsorship. Representative Ott says the next step is to get them assigned to a committee and get a public hearing on them.

What if you could get a DUI in Arizona for having had a few drinks two weeks ago?

Crazy, right?

Except it’s happening. Not with alcohol, but with marijuana.

Arizona drivers are going to jail, paying big fines and losing their licenses after having gotten DUI citations when blood tests prove they were not high.

“It makes no sense,” said attorney Michael Alarid III, who is representing a man charged under current law. “But this is how prosecutors and the courts are interpreting the law. And the Legislature doesn’t appear to want to change it. So we’re hoping we can get the issue before the state Supreme Court.”

How could a person who is not high get busted for DUI?

It happens when science meets politics.

Blood tests now can detect two important chemical compounds in marijuana. One of them makes a person high and lasts for hours. The other is inactive but can linger in a person’s system for up to a month.

In Arizona, state law says if you have either of these compounds in your blood you are guilty of a DUI.

“As things stand a person from Arizona could go on a snowboarding trip to Colorado or Washington State, where marijuana is legal for recreational use,” Alarid said. “And then a month later he could be driving in Arizona, get stopped and be convicted of DUI.”

Not long ago, the state Court of Appeals upheld Arizona’s law, which says if any “metabolite” of a drug like marijuana is found in a person’s blood he is guilty of DUI. There are about a dozen states with the same standard.

Alarid got a lower court to dismiss the original charges against his client after it was shown that the marijuana chemicals found in his client’s blood were inactive. The appeals court overturned it.

In it’s ruling on the case (Arizona v. Shilgevorkyan) the Appeals Court said, “We determined that the legislative ban extends to all substances, whether capable of causing impairment or not.”

Apparently, there is no statute in Arizona outlawing impaired logic.

(And yes, I’m aware that my continued employment proves it.)

The case is being prosecuted by the Maricopa County Attorney’s office. I asked County Attorney Bill Montgomery if he believed it was appropriate to convict people for DUI when the only marijuana metabolite in their blood did not cause impairment.

He responded, “The Court of Appeals decision is unremarkable in light of consistent case law on the issue of proscribing driving with a prohibited drug or its metabolite in a driver’s system.”

Since that didn’t answer my question, I tried again, asking if Montgomery would favor amending state law to differentiate between metabolites that cause impairment and those that do not.

He responded, “No. We do not want to create an incentive to ‘game’ how long it takes for any given metabolite to leave a driver’s system. Nice try, Ed.”

It isn’t a game. It’s chemistry.

Some states at least try to acknowledge the science. In Washington, for example, a person is considered impaired if a blood test shows 5.0 nanograms of marijuana’s active ingredient. That level has been compared to a .08 limit for alcohol.

“An alcohol DUI in Arizona gets your license suspended for 90 days,” Alarid said. “After 30 days you can drive to work and school. On the other hand, a drug-related DUI, like marijuana, gets you the same fines and jail time but revokes your license for a year. That means a person who wasn’t impaired could be punished more harshly than someone who was.”

Alarid is hoping the Arizona Supreme Court will take his case.

“In addition to the fairness issue, this doesn’t seem right in a state where citizens passed a medical marijuana law,” Alarid said. “It really puts an unfair burden on those patients.”

The risk of getting busted for a DUI charge when they are not impaired might cause some medical marijuana patients not to use the drug, no matter how much it helps them.

Of course, it’s probably just a coincidence that the politicians who could revise the DUI statute hate the medical marijuana law. As does the county attorney.

Coincidence. Yeah, that must be it.

Reach Montini at 602-444-8978 or ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com