Can you drive while on prescription drugs?

Most people think that you can only get a DUI, meaning driving under the influence, if you’ve had alcohol in your system and that’s it. But that’s not necessarily the case. You can still get a DUI if you’ve been driving while under the influence of drugs, whether that be from prescription drugs or not.

A common question that I often get is “how can I get a DUI?”

Oftentimes, people think that because they had a valid prescription for their drugs, then they’re off the hook. Well, think again. You can still get a DUI under those circumstances because the issue is not going to be whether you had a valid prescription. The issue for the government is whether you were driving under the influence of either alcohol or drugs or a combination of both.

So even if you have zero alcohol in your system but you have drugs in your system, all the government needs to prove is that you were driving a motor vehicle and that you were under the influence of drugs which caused your physical and or mental abilities to be impaired while you were driving.

So again, the government doesn’t have to prove that you were inebriated, that you were passed out, or that you couldn’t function. They just have to prove that you were under the influence, meaning that your physical and your mental abilities were impaired while driving the motor vehicle at the time. A drug recognition expert, or a DRE, is an officer who was trained to detect impairment in people who are driving under the influence of drugs. And they do that by asking a series of what’s called “pre field sobriety test questions.” They want to know where you were driving from, what type of drug you were on, and when the last time you ingested a drug was. They’ll also likely conduct a series of field sobriety tests, oftentimes asking you to walk in a straight line, balance on one leg, estimate 30 seconds, and other tasks of that nature.

So if you think about a driving under the influence case only involving drugs, the analysis is going to be a little bit different as opposed to whether you’re driving under the influence of alcohol. Some other factors that the government may look at is to see if there’s any additional aggravating circumstances in your case. So even if you have no alcohol in your system and if you’re driving under the influence of drugs, whether it’s prescription or not, some other factors that the government may look at is to see if there was an accident involving property damage, if there was an accident involving injury to someone else, if there was some sort of hit and run where you allegedly hit something or someone and you took off, and also the level of the type of drugs that are in your system. And likely, what’s going to happen is that you will have to submit to a blood test in order for the government to determine the level of drugs in your system at the time of driving.

I can’t stress this enough that every case is different with a different set of facts and circumstances. So if you’re in a situation where you were pulled over or you were apprehended by the police for driving under the influence of drugs, please make sure to give us a call and we would be more than happy to sit down and give you a legal consultation.