You should not operate a motor vehicle under the influence of anything. It\u2019s not safe, it\u2019s an unnecessary risk and it selfishly imposes risk from your behavior on other people who had no choice in the matter. At the same time, it\u2019s hard to make an argument for behavior that is not harmful or quantifiably risky enough to be penalized.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Such is the conundrum when it comes to issuing cannabis DUIs. Testing for THC levels in a way similar to how blood-alcohol breathalyzers measure intoxication has\u00a0proved fruitless<\/a>, if not impossible. THC is fat-soluble, alcohol is water-soluble. THC metabolites\u00a0stay in the body<\/a>\u00a0long after THC has stopped dancing on the brain.<\/p>\n And such is the reasoning behind the recommendation emerging from a two-year review of how to address roadside \u201cmarijuana DUI\u201d testing in Michigan: Don\u2019t do it \u2014 or at least, don\u2019t do like you do with alcohol.<\/p>\n According to the\u00a0Lansing State Journal<\/a>, a two-year review from the state\u2019s Impaired Driving Commission has recommended to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the state legislature that Michigan set \u201cno limit\u201d for how much THC a driver can have in their blood.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, if the recommendations from the expert panel are adopted by lawmakers and obeyed by law enforcement, police would be able to enforce DUI laws in a more old-fashioned way: by observing driving patterns and giving drivers a roadside sobriety test. In fact, this is a thing police are\u00a0already doing<\/a>\u00a0in other states, successfully.<\/p>\n According to experts, the level of THC metabolites in a person\u2019s blood is simply\u00a0not related<\/a>\u00a0to their level of impairment. It\u2019s a number that means something else. And arbitrary THC limits set in other states are wholly unscientific.\u00a0<\/p>\n Thus, \u201cthe only reasonable way to do this right now is to demonstrate that people are impaired\u201d through roadside sobriety tests and observing erratic driving, said Norbert Kaminski, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State University, in an interview with the Lansing State Journal.<\/p>\n Standard field sobriety tests include following the movement of a light or an officer\u2019s finger with your eyes, walking a line heel-to-toe for nine steps and returning, and holding one leg up six inches in the air for 30 seconds.\u00a0According to recent research<\/a>, these tests work as an accurate measure of sobriety \u2014 or lack thereof.<\/p>\n The recommendation comes a few months after Michigan voters legalized recreational cannabis. Medical cannabis has been legal in the state since 2008.\u00a0<\/p>\n Complaints from police about\u00a0roadside safety<\/a>\u00a0and apocalyptic visions of stoned drivers reducing the morning commute to a game of bumper cars set to an Afroman soundtrack are, by now, a\u00a0predictable verse<\/a>\u00a0in the rhythm of the cannabis legalization debate. Some states have tried to ameliorate these concerns by treating cannabis like alcohol \u2014 just like the legalization line would have us do \u2014 and have determined that a certain level of cannabis metabolites in the blood determines intoxication.<\/p>\n But this \u201csolution\u201d has just caused more confusion. In both Washington and\u00a0Colorado, that threshold is 5 nanograms per milliliter of blood. But, as state officials have\u00a0admitted<\/a>, that number is arbitrary and \u201cnot backed by scientific theories.\u201d This has caused a level of chaos\u2026 But not on the roads. In courtrooms, judges and juries have been increasingly\u00a0unconvinced<\/a>\u00a0by police assertions of marijuana-induced impairment.<\/p>\n At the same time, law enforcement has proven\u00a0perfectly able<\/a>\u00a0to arrest\u00a0and prosecute drug-impaired driving<\/a>\u00a0cases absent an ironclad, quantified level of intoxication and instead based on driver behavior.<\/p>\n If Michigan lawmakers listen to the experts, they\u2019ll have to pass a law that does not include a limit for the amount of cannabis drivers are allowed in their bloodstream while on the road. Current state law is zero-tolerance for any level of THC in the body for a driver, according to the State Journal \u2014 But the chance that such a case would hold up in court is even slimmer now, given the state panel\u2019s finding that such a threshold makes absolutely no sense.\u00a0<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, how do you know when you\u2019re too high to drive?<\/p>\n The post How Michigan Plans to Breathalyze for Marijuana DUIs\u2026 It Won\u2019t<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
You should not operate a motor vehicle under the influence of anything. It\u2019s not safe, it\u2019s an unnecessary risk and it selfishly imposes risk from your behavior on other people who had no choice in the matter. At the same time, it\u2019s hard to make an argument for behavior thatContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,6526,8739,484,328,90,179,420],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34260"}],"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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34261,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34260\/revisions\/34261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Aiming for Accuracy<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: How Michigan Plans to Breathalyze for Marijuana DUIs\u2026 It Won\u2019t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"