PHOENIX – Julie Willoughby says state legislators shouldn’t be making laws while on drugs for the same reason they shouldn’t be driving.
She says they make bad decisions.
So, the first-time Republican representative from Chandler has introduced a proposal to require all members of the Legislature to submit to random drug testing at the discretion of the Senate president or House speaker. And that would apply any time lawmakers are in session.
“A drug has the power of inhibiting your reasoning ability, to make you paranoid, to make you see things that aren’t there, to make you hallucinate,” Willoughby told Capitol Media Services. “And that could be severe when you’re talking about the job that we do as far as legislating new laws and defending different things.”
Consider, she said, drunk driving.
“You see someone no longer being able to have the correct response time to things,” Willoughby said.
Willoughby’s measure does not allow lawmakers to be tested for their blood-alcohol content to see if they’ve perhaps had one too many drinks at lunch before they come to the floor to vote. What justifies that exemption, she said, is the technology involved.