Medication Contraindication: Driving in Minnesota

By: Peter Drill on 06:46

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Posted on March 17, 2015 by Chuck Ramsay

Medication Contraindication: Driving in Minnesota

Do you take prescription medication? Approximately 70% of Americans do.

If your medication is classified as Schedule I or Schedule II—Adderall, Ambien, Codeine, or Klonopin, for example—every time you get behind the wheel of a car, you are committing the crime of driving while impaired. If arrested, you will lose your driver’s license, and proving that you are taking medication as prescribed by your doctor won’t help you get it back.

For this you can thank the Minnesota Court of Appeals for its recent decision in Dornbusch v. Comm’r of Pub. Safety.

In its decision, the Dornbusch court freely acknowledged that classifying medications—because of their potential for abuse—was never intended to thwart their prescribed use by drivers. 

Remember, we’re not talking about street drugs or hardcore narcotics here. It is against the law to drive in Minnesota if any amount of certain medications people take every day—Ritalin, Xanax, Vicodin, to name just a few—is present in your body.

But the Dornbusch court nonetheless held that when any amount of a Schedule I or II medication is found in a chemical test—even when the driver was taking the medication as prescribed—a judge’s hands are tied. If the state has revoked your driver’s license for suspected DWI, a valid prescription will do nothing to help you get your driver’s license back.

Let me guess; this is the point where you, and many readers, are thinking, “Well, it’s only a crime if I get arrested while driving, and even if I get pulled over, I won’t be arrested for DWI, so I don’t need to worry.”

Think again. Law enforcement officers need only a minor traffic infraction to justify pulling you over. Once you’ve been stopped, an officer’s hunch, your bloodshot eyes, and an inability to stand perfectly still while balancing on one leg is all it takes to arrest you for DWI.

Coming up next: a recent example from the Court of Appeals of just how easy it is to find yourself under arrest for DWI.

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