cann dui

Cannabis DUI and Alcohol DUI Laws are Treated the Same

In many states, cannabis DUI laws are treated like alcohol DUI laws.

But a cannabis DUI and an alcohol DUI should be treated differently for many reasons. One example of their difference is how THC and alcohol levels are metabolized. THC stays in the body for weeks after consuming while alcohol is purged in several hours. Yet the highs last about the same amount of time.
Getting pulled over weeks after smoking results in drivers getting charged with a DUI. That’s because it’s difficult for cops to determine how recently a driver smoked a bowl. Traditional sobriety tests don’t correspond to cannabis effects either. For example, a stoned driver can stand on one leg while a drunk driver cannot.
Scott Leist was a Seattle police officer, and a defense attorney for the Washington Traffic Defense. Leist agrees that Washington’s Cannabis DUI laws are a problem. In Washington, there is a .08 limit for alcohol and THC, but THC is nothing like alcohol.
Leist said, “some studies suggest that driving with moderate levels of THC in one’s system can actually improve driving performance.” There is simply no good science about what determines impaired driving with weed and what doesn’t.

THC doesn’t metabolize quickly and completely like alcohol.

Leist found that alcohol can metabolize quickly, meaning that it is easy to test when the last time alcohol was consumed. Marijuana is different because a person can consume weed and be impaired for a few hours. But THC stays in the system long after the consumption and high phase.
How quickly and completely THC metabolizes depends on a few factors. Namely; how it was consumed and when, how often the person consumes, and the potency of the substance. Small amounts of THC can be found days or even weeks after consumption. At the other end, a heavy consumer can test over the 5ng/mL limit long after they are sober.
Alcohol has more exact prediction than weed. What is the marijuana equivalent of two beers? How much THC at what age and weight will get a person to 5ng/mL levels? How fast does THC wear off for each person? Nobody knows the answers to these questions because cannabis research is hampered by federal scheduling. Alcohol has no scheduling restrictions to prevent accurate studies so much more research is available.

There are no accurate field sobriety tests for THC intoxication.

Police Officers don’t have a lot of experience or training for marijuana DUI detection’s. Smell alone is not a good clue for recent intoxication. Physical signs like red eyes is not enough to prove that a person is THC impaired.
There are a variety of reasons a driver might experience the ‘signs of THC intoxication’. A person crying or struggling with allergies causes red eyes. Fatigue can also reproduce the short-term memory issues associated with weed.
The best method cops have available is a warrant granted blood test. But blood tests don’t reveal when the last time the driver consumed weed. Unlike alcohol, there is no way to check if a person has had too much THC. There is no breathalyzer that would reveal THC impairment. A person can’t give themselves a field sobriety test like the alcohol tests.

Abby McLean drove sober and received a DUI.

Northglen, Colorado resident Abby McLean went through a DUI roadside checkpoint on her way home. She is 30, had nothing to drink or smoke that night and had no worries. When the cop walked up to her car he saw that she had blood shot eyes and smelled weed in the car.
The cop pulled out his handcuffs to arrests McLean when she exclaimed that she was on her way home to her children. McLean was forced to take a blood test which tested positive for THC intoxication. Her blood test was 5 times over the legal limit. She didn’t go to jail that night but she did go to court. It was a hung jury, but McLean settled for a lesser punishment.
Mark Kleiman is a professor of public policy at New York University. Kleiman said, “you can be positive for THC a week after the last time you used cannabis. Not subjectively impaired at all, not impaired at all by any objective measure, but still positive.”
It didn’t matter that McLean hadn’t smoked at all that night. If she smoked a week ago, she still got a cannabis DUI. Denver, Colorado’s District Attorney Mitch Morrissey says that Colorado won’t completely throw out the THC blood test. He then explained how it gives courts an extra piece of evidence during trials.

How to travel with cannabis in the car.

Scientists at UCSD are researching a new generation of cannabis field sobriety tests. One of these tests is called critical tracking. A person moves their finger around a square on a tablet to measure time distortion, because time can slow down when a person is high.
There is still a long way to go before an accurate field sobriety test exists. Tests like critical tracking are still in their experimental phase. But the nation is in desperate need for an accurate cannabis sobriety test.
Leist advises that drivers keep their weed in the trunk or in other inaccessible parts of the car. Crossing state borders with weed can result in significantly higher penalties and fines. Drivers should try to remember what they have stashed in their glove box. And don’t consume while driving or you will get a cannabis DUI .

weed drive

Accidents and the Dangers of Driving on Weed

Most people have been taught that alcohol increases the risk of accidents.

Smoking and driving can get you a DUI for an accident even in states where cannabis is legal. Current state laws for marijuana have focused on regulating it like alcohol while on the road. This is especially true when it comes to consuming and driving. Yet evidence of marijuana’s culpability in on-road accidents is difficult to prove.
Many states have reduced penalties for cannabis related crimes over the last few years. Yet as states continue to loosen regulations on marijuana safety, law enforcement is struggling to figure out how to establish a legal limit for drivers. They have focused on setting a blood-content test just like the .08 limit for alcohol.
A new study shows the challenges in accurately testing drivers.
One of the most difficult parts of testing is developing a threshold for what’s considered too high to drive. The conductors of the study concluded that “THC concentrations drop rapidly during the time required to collect a blood specimen in the U.S., generally within two to four hours.”
The low amount of time cannabis remains active for oral tests using the drivers’ saliva make it harder to fail than traditional tests. Saliva tests can be done roadside without a long wait but researchers found oral tests don’t provide “a precise measure of the level of impairment.”
Politicians are hesitant to implement concentration-based cannabis-driving legislation because it might ” unfairly target individuals not acutely intoxicated, because residual THC can be detected in blood for up to a month of sustained abstinence in chronic frequent smokers.” Depending on the direction that the new Attorney General Jeff Sessions takes the Justice Department over the coming years, detecting residual cannabinoids may be more important than registering intoxication.

Smoking weed is not safe while driving.

Cannabis intoxication has been shown to mildly impair a drivers psychomotor skills. It doesn’t appear to be severe or long lasting though. In driving simulator tests, this impairment was typically manifested by decreasing driving speed and needing more time to respond to emergency situations.
Yet this impairment does not appear to play a significant role in on-road traffic accidents. A review of seven different studies involving 7,934 drivers showed in 2002, “Crash culpability studies have failed to demonstrate that drivers with cannabinoids in the blood are significantly more likely than drug-free drivers to be culpable in road crashes.” And it’s not like people haven’t tried to prove a link either.
A Massive body of research exists that explores the impact of marijuana on psychomotor skills and actual driving performance. Researchers have done driving simulator studies, on-road performance studies, crash culpability studies, and reviews of the existing evidence. To date, the result of this research has shown how mildly cannabis affects driving abilities but that won’t stop the cops from hauling you off for having it in your system if you get in an accident.

Bad accidents

Marijuana has a measurable yet relatively mild effect on psychomotor skills.

Yet it does not appear to play a significant role in vehicle crashes, particularly when compared to alcohol. Researchers conducting a study for the National Institute on Drug Abuse said alcohol “significantly increased lane departures/minimum and maximum lateral acceleration”. Cannabis did not have the same correlation between consumption and decreased performance.

Researchers for the Highway Traffic Safety Administration funded study concluded Cannabis-influenced drivers are better able to measure their intoxication “may attempt to drive more cautiously to compensate for impairing effects, whereas alcohol-influenced drivers often underestimate their impairment and take more risk.”

People keep studying the link between cannabis, alcohol and car accidents.

The prevalence of both alcohol and cannabis use and the extreme morbidity associated with car crashes has lead to repeated research on the link between the two. According to another study, “drunk drivers are involved in 25% of motor vehicle fatalities, and many accidents involve drivers who test positive for cannabis.”
The researchers say that while both alcohol and cannabis impair performance in a “dose-related fashion” the “effects of cannabis vary more between individuals than they do with alcohol because of tolerance, differences in smoking technique, and different absorptions of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in marijuana.”
The effects of a cannabis “high” vary according to dose but are more pronounced with highly automatic driving functions than with more complex tasks.” Basically making it easier to focus on a plan than instinctively react to something. With alcohol the opposite pattern of impairment is produced and people get distracted easier.

Cannabis and alcohol have a synergistic effect.

Because of an increased awareness that they are impaired, “marijuana smokers tend to compensate more effectively while driving than drunks” by utilizing a variety of strategies. Mixing marijuana with alcohol removes the ability to use such strategies as the two substances increase the potency of the other when mixed.
Cannabis and alcohol work on many of the same levels in the brain and both inherently affect chemical production in the brain. Mixing cannabis and booze will amplify the effects of both and can lead to serious repercussions. While studies have been inconclusive regarding whether cannabis use causes an increased risk of accidents; in contrast, unanimity exists that alcohol use increases the risk of crashes.
In addition, the risk from driving under the influence of alcohol and cannabis together is higher than the risk of driving under the influence of either alone. One study even recommends that patients who smoke cannabis wait several hours before driving, and avoid combining the two drugs.

Even schools have studied how dangerous driving while high is.

The first study to analyze the effects of cannabis on driving was conducted by Researchers at the University of Iowa’s National Advanced Driving Simulator, sponsored by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, National Institute of Drug Abuse, and the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
The researchers found that cannabis use caused almost no impairment. The impairment that it did cause was similar to the change observed while under the influence of a legal alcohol limit. They basically couldn’t get cannabis to impair driving as much as one beer.
They tested impairment mainly with a simulator. “Once in the simulator—a 1996 Malibu sedan mounted in a 24-feet diameter dome—the drivers were assessed on weaving within the lane, how often the car left the lane, and the speed of the weaving. Drivers with only alcohol in their systems showed impairment in all three areas while those strictly under the influence of vaporized cannabis only demonstrated problems weaving within the lane.”

More research is needed to find the right limits.

All these study’s findings show that alcohol is a much more dangerous drug than cannabis yet regulated in a more relaxed manner. While driving while under the influence of cannabis can still get you locked up, it is unclear how dangerous it is. More research is needed to show exactly how much cannabis should be legally allowable but for the time being, driving after consuming any cannabis remains illegal.
Until the whole world switches over to autonomous vehicles and we don’t have to worry about driver error any more, people are still going to get into accidents (sober or not). It is best not to contribute to the problem and simply don’t drive while high. You never know when you might need to instinctually react to something in your lane. Thanks for reading.