In an effort to control marijuana use, Colorado legislators are proposing a DUI blood-content level to control high drivers. Because medical-marijuana use has increased in the state, lawmakers want to ensure users aren’t taking advantage of the registry despite the opposition which argues that this is just another step toward legalization in its similarity to alcohol guidelines.
If the rules are implemented, high drivers will receive DUIs if they test positive for five or more nanograms of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive substance in marijuana, within two hours of being pulled over. In other words, users would have to be placed in some sort of limbo while officers determined their level of cannabinoid intoxication. This could be tricky for police departments and jailhouses employees who might not be trained in understanding more long-term marijuana effects, which would result in a waste of time and resources.
In terms of behavior, marijuana use is more difficult to pinpoint than alcohol use. The police have developed a fairly accurate system for pinpointing drunk drivers, i.e. they swerve and exhibit signs of absent-mindedness. In 2010, an Israeli lab conducted a simulated experiment comparing drunk and drivers on marijuana. The results showed that stoned drivers tend to drive slower and more cautiously “because they have a different sense of time” while drunk drivers, of course, exhibited less caution considering their lack of self-awareness. Both drivers are dangerous but there’s no denying the high driver is less of an exhibitionist.
As a result, the police could very well be prone to pulling over more people for minute reasons. An elderly driver, for example, could mirror a person who has smoked a joint 10 minutes before getting behind the wheel. With so many factors to consider, Colorado’s law has a strong possibly of unnecessarily increasing police involvement on the road. It’s a clear economic illustration of wasted investment, unless law enforcement officials can come up with a more comprehensible picture of how a high driver behaves and if they are really dangerous.
Ultimately, the progressive Colorado lawmakers have a good idea in principle. In states that have legalized medical marijuana, there should be an effort made to counterbalance those who take advantage of the system. But a substance such as marijuana is still shrouded in mystery and without a concentrated attempt by officials to further understand it, a law of this degree will have no viable use.
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Marijuana has repeatedly been proven to NOT cause cancer, heart disease, brain damage, liver disease, emphysema, or overdoses, and its addictive potential is about on par with coffee. The DEA is 100% misinformed when it calls marijuana “extremely harmful”!
The marijuana prohibition empowers drug dealers and the cartels, and makes our children LESS safe! Because of the failings of the prohibition, our children now have easier access to marijuana than to alcohol! We parents have been patient long enough, we must speak up and demand that marijuana be legally sold to adults in gas stations and supermarkets just as beer and wine are today!
We need laws based on logic, not ideology! We need to put an end to Richard Nixon’s marijuana prohibition and Legalize Adult Marijuana Sales!!
This is Asinine, how did they determine a person is too high to drive at 5 nanograms?
As America starts to come out of the last 80 years of propaganda and misinformation spread by the government about the dangers of marijuana and str8s start to become familiar and acquainted with
the lady,these first steps will be stumbling blocks that only time will erase.
There will be more laws enacted that are unnecessary,just to comfort the scared and ignorant and all will eventually be history. It will be just as rocky coming out of prohibition as it was going into it.
I have read accounts of federal drug police raiding peoples homes during the late 30’s and early 40’s
because they were growing hemp to make their own cloth,paper and other goods,in their back yards
and it was described as the earliest of assault team arrests,,,,even though they were not suspected drug dealers,just hemp growers. Most people busted during that time were not imprisoned but were “scared” into not growing hemp any longer.
And those same industries that lobbied for marijuana/hemp prohibition are still in existence and still need hemp kept off the open market in order for their continued financial security.
One of the largest is big oil,who now has a majority of the market for plastics of all kinds,,,,all damaging our environment and rheir plastic could be replaced by biodegradable plastics made from hemp.
Another,famous as the big gun behind hemp prohibition,was and still is the pulpwood paper industry,including the supply and production industries plus the chemical companies that manufacture the toxic chemicals required in manufacturing pulpwood into paper,but not in manufacturing paper,,,better paper,stronger materials and biodegradable products,,all made from hemp,a renewable source every year,as opposed to 20 years to grow a pulpwood crop.
The legalization of marijuana will automatically allow hemp to be produced and sold in the quantities required for those industries to eventually be replaced .
And that is why we,the people,will have to take our right too cannabis back from our government
in every state where a ballot initiative is available,because it will only be accomplished by the people
and no legislative body,where votes can be bought,will ever pass a legalization bill.
When our Secretary of State stated “We can’t quit the drug war,,,there is just too much money in it””””
she was not talking just about the 20 or 30 billion we spend yearly maintaining the prohibition or
even the 40 to 60 billion the cartels take,untaxed,out of America for marijuana,but also the hundreds of billions involved in big industry,keeping things just as they are.
Marijuana is the safest drug with actual benefits for the user as opposed to alcohol which is dangerous, causes addiction, birth defects, and affects literally every organ in the body. Groups are organizing all over the country to speak their minds on reforming pot laws. I drew up a very cool poster for the cause which you can check out on my artist’s blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/01/vote-teapot-2011.html Drop in and let me know what you think!