Impaired drivers are responsible for the deaths of nearly 50 people a day and almost 18,000 people each year. The International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration and state officials have teamed up to create the Drug Recognition Expert program.

Drug recognition is a growing field in law enforcement and has demonstrated its effectiveness as a means of identifying and prosecuting drug-impaired drivers. A properly-trained DRE can successfully identify drug impairment and accurately determine the category of drugs causing impairment. Since the first DRE program was started in the U.S. in the early 1970s, DRE programs have grown to include 49 states, the District of Columbia, Canada and several other countries around the world.

With the training of DREs, many states have seen a dramatic increase in drug-impaired driving arrests and convictions. Join the fight against impaired drivers. For more information, visit the Georgia Public Safety Training Center’s DRE website. If you are interested in DRE training, contact the Georgia Public Safety Training Center Traffic Division.

Michael Blute, DRE Coordinator
mblute@gpstc.org
(478) 993-4506

Brad Owens, SFST Coordinator
(478) 993-4959

Jonathan Fuss, Traffic Section Supervisor
(478) 993-4441