The program originated in California in the late seventies, where two traffic officers from the Los Angeles Police Department were encountering more and more drivers who were impaired by substances other than alcohol. They spoke with some of their colleagues in their drug branch who had contacts in the medical community, and they developed a very rudimentary process. That process was initially studied at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and evolved over the years to the program we're using now.
The whole program falls back under the technical advisory panel, where we have medical doctors, ophthalmologists, toxicologists, lawyers, and police officers to put the program in such a fashion that trained DREs who've taken specific training to deliver the program as instructors can go out to train other police officers.