AUGUSTA – Gov. Paul LePage has a stack of bills that he must decide whether to approve. One that he’s sure to sign will make it a crime to drive a large commercial vehicle while on methadone.
Lisa Ronan of Gray plans to be in the governor’s office today to witness the signing of the bill. Her husband, a driver for UPS, was killed in December 2009 when his work vehicle was hit in Naples by a utility truck whose driver was taking methadone, a synthetic narcotic that’s used to relieve pain or prevent withdrawal symptoms from drug addiction.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Anne Graham, D-North Yarmouth, makes it a crime for a person with methadone in their system to drive a commercial vehicle of 10,000 or more pounds.
Graham said Thursday that she was prompted to introduce the bill after meeting Ronan and hearing her story.
“Lisa asked that I help her never let this type of accident ever happen again to a family,” Graham said when she presented the bill to lawmakers.
Graham said Thursday that when she looked into the issue, she found that a ban on methadone use by commercial vehicle drivers was “conspicuously absent” from Maine law.
“For some reason, that was not there. All this (bill) did was get us to adhere to federal law,” Graham said.
The methadone bill is among about 70 that wound up on LePage’s desk after last week’s two-day windup to the 2011 legislative session. The Republican governor had signed about half of them by Thursday, well within the 10-day deadline to act.
Other drug-related bills he has signed make trafficking 300 or more methamphetamine or amphetamine pills a more serious crime, outlaw certain active compounds found in marijuana, and prohibit the sale or possession of so-called bath salts, which contain dangerous synthetic drugs.
He also signed bills to simplify Maine’s saltwater recreational fishing registry and allow limited periods in which nonresidents may snowmobile in Maine without being registered in the state, provided their state allows similar exemptions for Maine snowmobilers.
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