Drug DUIs skyrocket in Olmsted County since legalizing pot

It’s less than a year since the DFL trifecta in St. Paul legalized the use of marijuana in Minnesota. At the time, public safety officials warned that legalization would increase the prevalence of impaired driving and complicate their enforcement efforts.

Turns out they were right. While still too soon for statewide results to come in, the extraordinary increase in citations for driving while intoxicated under the influence of pot in Olmsted County serves as a wake-up call to the new reality on Minnesota roads. The documented rise in drug DUIs reported by the Olmsted County sheriff thus far this year was highlighted by the Post Bulletin.

In the first six months of 2023, the Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office recorded four drug-impaired driving arrests.

This year, it has recorded 32.

This significant increase of drug-impaired driving arrests wasn’t a surprise after Minnesota became the 23rd state to legalize recreational marijuana last August, said Olmsted County Sheriff Kevin Torgerson.

“We knew that we would see more, but we didn’t know how many,” Torgerson said.

Total arrests for impaired driving in the southern Minnesota county have shot up roughly 50 percent through June of this year compared to 2023. The dramatic increase in DUIs has been driven largely by arrests for driving under the influence of pot and other drugs.

During the first six months of 2024, there were 81 arrests made for impaired driving: 49 involved alcohol only, 26 involved drugs only and six involved both drugs and alcohol.

“Whether or not it’s a trend we’re only seeing here in Olmsted County and out in the rural areas, I don’t know yet,” Torgerson said. “But I suspect that that’s not true.”

Worse yet, those statistics do not include DUIs issued by police officers in Rochester, by far the most populous area in Olmsted County.

In many of the reports filed for the arrests, Torgerson said deputies noted the drivers told them they were smoking at a friend’s house or had a joint a few minutes prior to the stop.

“Just like alcohol, you can’t have it in your car,” Torgerson said. “You can’t have it open, you can’t be using it while you’re driving. It’s a hard way to be educated — getting arrested for driving while impaired.”

There’s no statistics yet on the number of injury crashes and fatalities involving drug impaired drivers since the legalization of pot. But authorities expect a similar upward trend if Minnesota is anything like the other 22 states to legalize marijuana.