We do exactly this with alcohol.
It would be useful to have guidelines. If I have a beer, that doesn’t mean I can’t drive, I’m still well under the limit. If we don’t set limits for cannabis use, then people will just make up their own. Is one bowl okay? How about an hour later?
Is it dangerous to tell people that drinking up to some analytically testable precise level might be legal?
You regularly see people, that are stoned, driving 120 mph and they’re smoking so much pot, in the car, that even at 120mph, you can smell it?
I drive a convertible. They usually have their windows open. They cut in front of you then zoom into the distance and you spend the next 30 seconds or minute in their very aromatic wake. As they slowly get farther away it becomes more diluted.
I would rather leave the answer up to the lawyers, but people seem bad judges of their own level of inebriation, and the legal limits are there as evidence that can be used against them should they get into trouble. But, yes, just like bottles of booze helpfully state how many “units” they contain, no reason not to have an analogue for people who cannot on their own figure out how many bowls or micrograms of LSD is “a lot”.
As of just a few weeks ago, recreational cannabis is now legal in NY State. And the provisions of the law do address some of these issues, albeit in ways that (to me) were unexpected.
You can legally smoke (or vape) cannabis or cannabis concentrates almost anywhere that you can legally smoke a cigarette. So, on the sidewalk right in front of a police officer, in the park (most parks), outside a movie theater or outside your workplace–these are all fine. Inside of cars is explicitly not allowed, even if you’re not driving. Even if you’re parked (you can possess it in the car, no problem. Just don’t light up.).
Driving under the influence of cannabis is a misdemeanor (not dropped to a violation).
The police can not use the odor of cannabis as probable cause to stop you, search your car or person, or suspect you of any crime or violation. The odor of cannabis is not probable cause for anything.
The law also provides (and provides funds) for research into developing a test, and for public information campaigns to prevent driving while under the influence.
It’s too soon to know if we’re going to see a big increase in people driving stoned, or negative effects from that. I will say that, here in NYC at least, the odor of weed from cars and on the street has always been pretty much a constant thing. Legalization is not likely to increase that much, I would bet, because anyone who wants to drive stoned is already doing so.
Thanks for the clear write-up. Very interesting.
I’m curious what you find unexpected. That seems like a model of clarity and reasonable logic given the shaky state of any sort of reliable repeatable test for cannabis-based impairment.
Setting aside totally the question of whether recreational cannabis ought to be legalized, this certainly seems like a sound way to do it.
That’s what was unexpected to me! After years of debating this in NY, we finally got a law that seems to be mostly fair and clear and equitable. We’re probably still a year or so away from the dispensaries (and Amsterdam-style “lounges” where people can go and smoke and hang out–another pleasant surprise that I didn’t expect), but so far, this looks like we’re on a good pathway.
Can you tell if these drivers aren’t also drinking alcohol?
Nope. Nor if they’ve already had 4 lines of cocaine, a couple armloads of heroin and last slept on a Monday back in March.
But I know they’re blazing up a storm & driving like wildmen. (Almost 100% men, or at least male).
D’oh 
. Thank you!
Even a blind pig like the Albany legislative staff occasionally trips over an acorn.
More likely, there’s “model” legislation written by an MJ industry lobbying group of lawyers & marketers that they “helpfully” provided to Albany that was enacted mostly unread and definitely unedited.
I honestly think this is analogous to what health care types would call “comorbidities.” I live in Oregon, which has always been a state that loves its weed and we’ve been legal recreational for almost six years now after almost 20 years of (wink wink) medical legal and I am quite certain a pretty decent percentage of the people on the road are baked to one degree or another while out cruising around. And during business hours it tends to be chill and everybody is just attending to business. Traffic goes fast but generally smoothly (within a given set of parameters and accounting for some of our arcanely primordial road conditions also weather) until after dark. Then shit goes adrift all over the place. At that point you still have a lot of stoners out on the road but you also have the drinkers, meth heads and opioid/heroin crowd out and about because those guys DON’T GET UP EARLY. And I bet most of us see about the same thing in other cities. Anyway, seems to me that the weed-only drivers are less of a hazard than the those who smoke weed in addition to their other really debilitating habits. I won’t go do evening delivery any more, used to do a ton of food delivery and the like, but I can’t deal with the chaos on the road at night while daytime traffic is pretty reliable–predictably crappy, if you will.
Believe you me, LEOs have been abusing that rationale for years and years. If they want to pull over a carload of hippie types, for instance, or young Black dudes listening to loud-ass music, and don’t notice any legit reason to stop them, it’s astonishing how often that particular car they want to bust just happened to smell like reefer before the cops initiate the encounter.