KNOX COUNTY, Tenn. — When Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen worked on cases involving driving under the influence in the 1990s, she said most of them were similar.
"Most of our DUIs were alcohol-related," she said. "It was stops that were generally made late at night — people leaving the bars — there weren't a lot of daytime arrests."
She said that's no longer the case. It's one of the topics highlighted during the new season of her podcast, "Generally Speaking."
"The majority of our DUI arrests involve some type of drug. Many of them are drugs in combination with alcohol and many of them are just drugs, no alcohol at all," she said. "When we started seeing an uptick in opioids and street drugs here, we really started seeing those results on the roads."
She said her team is prosecuting more cases of people driving under the influence of drugs.
"It is scary if you really start thinking about it," Allen said. "We do seem to have so many impaired drivers on the road, all hours."
Proving that in court — however — can be more challenging.
"If someone's drinking, you can typically smell that on their breath. Drugs, unfortunately, don't have a smell," she said. "In prosecutions where we have drugs, we have to rely very heavily on toxicology reports."
Gen. Allen said she anticipates they'll continue seeing these types of cases.
"As people use, they're going to continue to drive to get from place to place and so, really, DUIs kind of go hand in hand with our influx of drugs," she said. "I think it is important that you be vigilant when you're driving, because everybody out there on the road may not be quite as sober as you are."