It states that most casual users won’t be able to drive for a few hours after taking a couple of tokes, but long term users will be affected.
My understanding was that THC stays in your system for as long as 30 days after smoking weed. How can any reliable test be enacted that would show that someone is currently high on weed versus someone who smoked a ton yesterday, but is perfectly fine to drive now?
Is there an objective way to say, “This test shows that this driver is stoned vs. this driver smokes a whole bunch of weed, but he’s fine right now”?
Does this need to be moved to GD because there simply is no good way to test?
This question presumes that we don’t currently have issues with impaired driving via THC. Isn’t the usual method to first demonstrate impairment via dashcam footage, impairment tests, etc.? If a long-term user is perfectly fine to drive, he shouldn’t (theoretically) be caught by such a screening.
You can still do field sobriety tests - which won’t “catch” everyone, but will catch the ones that are REALLY stoned. Also some effects like red eyes and the like go away much quicker than the levels of THC go away.
If it is dangerous to drive on X level of THC - it should make no difference that the person was prescribed it.
I understand that if you pull a vehicle over driving 11mph on the freeway, weed smoke rolls out the windows. and Cheech and Chong are inside the cop has an easy case.
I’m talking about something analogous to a DUI stop. Car is pulled over, an odor of alcohol is detected. Driver is showing some signs of impairment, but it could be tiredness or nervousness. The police check and the driver is asked to submit to a sobriety test. Breath test shows a .097 level. Legally drunk, but not pissing himself drunk. He’s still over the limit. Book 'em Danno.
It is a good question though. The gold standard for alcohol impaired driving is .08 as determined by calibrated breathalyzers or a blood test at the police station. That is the equivalent of 4 beers for most people and the effects vary widely among different people.
If you fail a field sobriety test (some of which most people can’t pass on their best day cold sober), you are deemed impaired even if you really aren’t very impaired relatively speaking. The goal of the police officer is to get enough evidence through a field sobriety test to get enough evidence to get you to take a breathalyzer for proof of impairment in court.
Similar tests do not exist for THC because it stays in your body for so long and there is no scientific standard for impairment. If there was, the state would need to revoke the driver’s license for every medical marijuana user today and that isn’t going to happen.
Disclaimer: I have never been arrested for a DUI and don’t use drugs of any form but this is a legal gap that is hard to address scientifically.
It’s a good question because some jurisdictions have tried to treat it like blood alcohol. If you’ve used pot at all in the last couple weeks you can’t legally drive.
It’s one of those things they haven’t worked out yet.
But again, this is GQ and maybe needs to be GD, any standard that punishes people for driving after having smoked weed 2 WEEKS AGO is not concentrating on impaired driving. It is setting a standard to set a standard.
Is there really no objective test to see if a marijuana smoker is currently intoxicated by some sort of test? Again, not the obviously stoned person, but one that might be just over the “limit.” Whatever that is…
The problem is that the tests detect THC metabolites, not THC. IIRC these are soluble in fats and stay in your body for a long time. So the tests determine that you were stoned sometime in the past, without any way to tell if it was a second ago, or a week ago.
There *are *blood tests which reveal actual THC in the bloodstream, not the inactive metabolites that urine and hair strand tests do. They’re expensive, and generally used only after a workplace accident where it’s important to know if the person was under the influence at the time of the accident, not if he’s smoked sometime in the past 30 days. I suspect they’ll become cheaper as demand for them rises.
I’ve also seen a couple of patents for saliva testing of THC, but as far as I know there’s not one on the market yet. This may be the time to invest.
Or they’ll continue to do pee tests and just arrest anyone who tests positive for metabolites for driving under the influence, just like they do now. There’s not a lot of motivation for law enforcement to get more accurate/honest about this.
As the article states, this is believed to be due to a decline in drunk driving, but even so, I think the inference can be drawn that either pot doesn’t contribute to traffic fatalities or if it does, it’s impact is significantly less than that of alcohol.
Up to now, the main goal of such tests was to find people who use marijuana, before hiring them. Whether they used it last night or 2 weeks ago didn’t matter much in the hiring decision. Also, faster results from the test didn’t matter much. The hiring process usually takes several days, at least.
As more states go for legalization/decriminalization, there will probably be a demand for an instant-reading test. Probably something that evaluates the residue of marijuana smoke on your breath – a weed-breathalizer! Then if they get a positive reading on that, they will take you o the station for the more accurate (and expensive) blood tests, which are good evidence in court. This what they generally do for DWI cases now.
The company that first comes up with such a machine that is accurate will probably make a whole lot of money from it!
Roadside testing for THC has been in use in Australia for a number of years and like alcohol the cops have a quick test as well as a more accurate saliva test in the van which stands up in court.
Realistically speaking of you fail the test your likely to impaired having smoked recently as pothead co workers who smoke every night have never had a problem passing the saliva test the next morning.
It would be interesting to see some official testing like we have seen with alcohol where they put drivers who have had a few drinks on a test course to show how they did before drinking and after drinking. They could do the same kinds of tests with pot smokers. Drive the course straight and then after a joint do the course again to see how they did. I think the results would be much different for drivers that smoke daily compared to drivers that only indulge maybe once a week/month etc.
THC levels in your blood are very poor indicators of the persons current state of mind. If you smoke often you will have high THC levels even when you aren’t stoned. I’m so amazed at how much ignorance still exists about cannabis. People have had it drilled in their heads for so long about how evil it is that they have no clue about how it really affects people (i.e. Refer Madness etc.).
I would agree though that if you get pulled over and pot smoke is emitting from your car that you should possibly be charged with a DUI. It is still illegal to smoke and drive even in states that have allowed it’s medicinal use.
The problem there is that acquiring, distributing & using marijuana on the scale needed for a serious test would draw the attention of the Feds, so nobody in the States has been willing to touch it.
While it’s true that THC metabolites will show up in urine up to a month after you smoke weed, THC itself is only in your bloodstream while you’re actually stoned. So, a blood test will give a pretty good measurement of how much weed you’ve smoked in the last few hours. The problem is, there’s no scientific evidence that smoking X amount of pot makes you a worse driver, like there is for alcohol above 0.08. Marijuana slows reaction time (albeit not as much as alcohol), but the Cheech & Chong movies were right on one thing: when people smoke, they tend to drive more slowly than while sober. Also, because weed tends to make people paranoid, they actually pay more attention to what’s going on around them while they’re driving (especially if they see a cop on the road with them). It makes people less reckless, while alcohol makes them more so. This is all generally true for most people, but I’ve certainly known some exceptions.
The bottom line: Regardless of whether you’ve been drinking, smoking pot, or using any other drugs (including prescription meds), if a cop sees you driving erratically, running stoplights, ignoring road signs, etc., he/she WILL pull you over. If you test above the legal limit for any of these substances, you WILL get a DUI…in fact, you can still get a DUI even if you’re not “over the limit,” provided you fail the sobriety tests. If you drive safely (and your registration, headlights, etc. are all good), you typically won’t get pulled over in the first place. So the best advice is “check yourself before you wreck yourself.” If you don’t KNOW with certainty that you’re safe to drive (or if your friends are asking if you’re OK), don’t get behind the wheel. Call a cab, or chill out til you sober up!