T<\/span>he Commonwealth of Massachusetts saw its highest court rule on Tuesday that roadside field sobriety tests \u2014 used to see if someone is under the influence of alcohol while operating a motor vehicle \u2014 cannot be treated as conclusive evidence to prove someone is operating under the influence of marijuana.<\/p>\n However, the Supreme Judicial Court did conclude it was fair game for officers to tell jurors how someone performed on the test, but not whether they passed or failed. Police will also not be allowed to tell jurors whether or not they felt someone was too high to be behind the wheel.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile not all researchers agree, a significant amount of research has shown that consumption of marijuana can impair the ability to drive,\u201d the court said in its opinion. <\/a>\u201cThere is ongoing disagreement among scientists, however, as to whether the [field sobriety tests] are indicative of marijuana impairment. In recent years, numerous studies have been conducted in an effort to determine whether a person\u2019s performance on the [field sobriety test] is a reliable indicator of impairment by marijuana. These studies have produced mixed results.\u201d<\/p>\n The experts tend to agree with the courts on the ongoing complexity of the issue.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is one of the more complicated cannabis policy issues out there, and we expect to see a variety of legal, scientific, and technological developments around it over the next several years,\u201d said Mason Tvert, an activist who led Colorado\u2019s successful legalization effort<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tvert went on to speak of the compelling public interest in preventing impaired driving, but said that many states have adopted laws that result in the punishment of drivers who were not actually impaired.<\/p>\n \u201cNot surprisingly, these flawed laws result in court challenges, leaving it up to judges to keep law enforcement in check, as was the case in Massachusetts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project said it supports the use of field sobriety tests to deal with impaired driving, and noted that the court did not strike down the legality of these tests<\/a>. \u201cThis ruling just says that police officers cannot definitively say if a person failed, so the court must look at the totality of circumstances,\u201d said Senior Communications Manager Morgan Fox. \u201cThis could actually protect drivers from being falsely convicted based on one officer\u2019s testimony, but won\u2019t hamper efforts to prevent impaired driving.\u201d<\/p>\n Jolene Forman, staff attorney at the Drug Policy Alliance, says the court\u2019s decision makes a lot of sense because the tests have not been validated. \u201cIt\u2019s imperative we invest resources into either validating these tests or finding better tests that actually measure marijuana impairment before we use them to convict people,\u201d she said. \u201cIf they\u2019re not actually showing people are who are impaired, we may be falsely charging safe drivers.\u201d<\/p>\n Forman said the tests may also be failing to detect people who are in fact operating a vehicle under the influence of marijuana \u2014 as field tests can both under- and over-capture marijuana impairment.<\/p>\n The nation\u2019s oldest marijuana reform group called the court\u2019s decision a common sense ruling. \u201cAvailable science has never established the predictive validity of Standard Field Sobriety Tests for identifying subjects who may be under the influence of controlled substances other than alcohol,\u201d said NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano.<\/p>\n Armentano also pointed to the scientific realities of the current state of cannabis testing, <\/a>or lack thereof: \u201cGiven these realities, the court was correct to rule that subjects\u2019 subjective performance on these tests ought not to be viewed as persuasive evidence of cannabis-induced impairment.\u201d<\/p>\n The scale of the problem and value of finding a solution isn\u2019t lost on investors now funding numerous startups looking for a way to test for THC impairment in real-time. Mike Lynn of Hound Labs, one of the companies hoping to invent the pot industry holy grail of a non-intrusive roadside pot test, spoke to Josh Constine of TechCrunch<\/a> at its annual SF Disrupt conference in San Francisco this week. Constine provided one of the event\u2019s big laughs when he asked Lynn, \u201cWhy are you such a narc?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI swear I\u2019m not a narc,\u201d the former emergency room doctor Flynn responded. \u201cReally what we try to do at Hound Labs is be fair and balance public safety and fairness. Because we need to have a standard. You can\u2019t go around stoned behind the wheel just like you can\u2019t drive drunk, right? At the same time, you don\u2019t want to start firing people or arresting people that aren\u2019t impaired.\u201d<\/p>\n While Lynn\u2019s hopes of balancing the scales of justice are surely merited, the concept of developing a device that could eventually become standard issue in police vehicles likely isn\u2019t keeping him up at night either.<\/p>\n This year on Saint Patrick\u2019s Day, the San Diego Police Department debut its new pair of Dr\u00e4ger DrugTest 5000s,<\/a> a mouth swab drug test that can detect seven drugs including marijuana. The test can detect THC, but blood tests would still be required to get exact levels. San Diego\u2019s police chief told the LA Times<\/a>,<\/u> \u201cIt\u2019s a huge concern of ours with the legalization of marijuana that we\u2019re going to see an increase in impaired drugged driving.\u201d<\/p>\n In Washington, the American Automobile Association (AAA) released a report on the recent climb in road fatalities where marijuana is detected. But AAA conceded it\u2019s difficult to tell if someone is actually driving high.\u00a0 At the time, the National Cannabis Industry Association\u2019s Deputy Director Taylor West told CNN Money<\/a>, \u201cAll this report really shows is that more people in Washington State are likely consuming cannabis, and thus might have some THC in their systems at the time of an accident. But since having THC in your system tells us nothing about your potential impairment, it would be like a report showing how many people involved in accidents had drunk a beer in the last week.\u201d<\/p>\n In Colorado, police go to a workshop where volunteers get really high and police interact with them. Colorado also released data that showed a rise in traffic deaths<\/a> where THC was present. But as Tvert pointed out to us earlier this year: \u201cThere isn\u2019t very good data pre-legalization.\u201d Tvert said drug testing was done in fewer than 50 percent of fatal accidents, \u201cso state officials have warned against making before-after comparisons.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> what should police do to safely protect against high driving?<\/p>\n The post DUI Tests Inadmissible in Pot Cases, Court Says<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued a ruling that will help protect against false impaired-driving convictions from faulty tests, but will still allow police to work on getting high drivers off the road. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts saw its highest court rule on Tuesday that roadside field sobriety tests \u2014Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,80,1697,90,707],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19582,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19581\/revisions\/19582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: DUI Tests Inadmissible in Pot Cases, Court Says<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"