The Chautauqua County Sheriff's Department is familiar with the excesses of summer drivers, particularly along the Lake Erie shore. This year the substance problem isn't alcohol.
Sheriff James Quattrone is grappling with the issues of drugs, most visibly marijuana, because of the gradual legalization process in Albany. Quattrone doesn't think state government is handling it very well.
While there have been plenty of arrests in party areas for alcohol this summer, Quattrone said the big problem is drugs.
"They're growing their own. I don't know if there is a correlation with the legalization of marijuana or not, but we definitely have seen it. We've already surpassed the number of DWAI drug arrests this year than we have in the total of 2019 and 2020," Quattrone said.
For police, the big problem is that for drugs there is no equivalent of the breathalyzer, with its quick alcohol reading. Instead, for drugs. the system relies on specially trained officers who render opinions of impaired, clearing the way for a blood test.
"As a former drug recognition expert since 1996 and as an instructor in that, we're specifically looking for signs of impairment," he said. "So for the last decade or longer, we have been teaching at the academy, not only the standardized field sobriety for alcohol, but we do a section in there of recognizing drug-impaired drivers."
Quattrone said his deputies are seeing a wide array of drugs showing up in impaired drivers.
His precautions even include telling deputies: no pot, no how. He said it stays in the blood for so long a deputy would potentially have trouble with a test.
"The impairment from marijuana can last for up to 24 hours, even after that euphoria is gone," Quattrone said. "So with alcohol, usually, when you're intoxicated, that goes away. Maybe you're hungover, but you're relatively safe to drive. But with marijuana, the euphoria wears away, you don't feel high or stoned, but you're still impaired for up to 24 hours."
