Let’s start by stating that driving
while impaired by drugs or alcohol is a crime and must be punished. All 50 U.S.
states have clear laws prohibiting this activity. But there is one intoxicant that is
trickier than the others: marijuana, especially when used for medical purposes.
During the past two years, Colorado
and Montana, along with more than a dozen other states, have proposed laws that set a strict
threshold for determining when a marijuana user is deemed too impaired to
drive. These would consider a concentration of more than 5 nanograms of
tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC (the psychoactive component of marijuana) per
milliliter of blood, as hands-down proof of intoxication or impairment.
Several states are going further and
have either adopted or are considering zero-tolerance laws
for THC levels. This means any THC in the blood would result in a conviction. Here’s the problem with these laws:
There are questions about how, and at what level, cannabis use impairs driving
ability. For a patient in one of the 17 states where marijuana has been
legalized for medicinal use, how are you to know when it’s legal to drive?
After consuming marijuana, should you wait 12 hours to drive or one day? When
will your THC level be below the 5-nanogram threshold? The answer is
complicated.
Although marijuana is readily
detectable in toxicology tests of blood, hair,
urine or saliva, what isn’t clear is just how quickly THC passes through the
body. We know, for example, that THC may be detected in the blood of occasional
users several hours after ingesting. But in some chronic users there may be
traces for days after the last use, long after any performance-impairing
effects have subsided.
This is a very clear contrast with
alcohol. There is a firm understanding of the rate at which the body metabolizes alcohol
and there are well-known guidelines on how much time must pass after drinking
before one is fit to drive. Tests can easily be administered in roadside stops.
Those who fail simple benchmarks of sobriety -- not to mention breath tests --
are usually convicted or plead guilty.
The research on how marijuana
affects driving is far less conclusive, though.
Testing done on drivers under the
influence of alcohol often show that drivers display more aggressive behavior
behind the wheel, and errors are more pronounced than when sober. The opposite
tends to be true when drivers are under the influence of THC; they tend to have
heightened awareness -- rather than diminished sensitivity as they do after
drinking -- to their surroundings. As a result, they tend to compensate by
driving more cautiously.
What this means is that we need more
research before new DUI marijuana laws are enacted. Setting an absolute
impairment standard for THC bloodstream levels is premature. And these laws,
which target marijuana use and associated medical marijuana patients, are
discriminatory.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-01/marijuana-as-medicine-needs-rules-to-drive-by.html
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