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Driving and pot
Doug Beazley | Sun.com | July 8, 2006

Here's what cops want you to remember: James McIlwrick was high on marijuana and prescription drugs the morning he slammed a pickup truck into another vehicle two years ago, killing Tammy Engelking and Henry Yao.

Here's what they'd rather you forget: your chances of being caught driving under the influence of pot are slim to none.

Unless you get into a serious accident - or confess to a police officer in a moment of stoned candour - you're probably going to get away with it.

And there are probably a lot more stoned drivers on the highways than anyone cares to admit. McIlwrick's case was an odd one: having caused the crash outside Sherwood Park that killed Engelking and Yao, he freely admitted to emergency medical staff and police at the scene he'd smoked a joint earlier in the day.

He also copped to consuming the drugs Ativan, Zyprexia and Zithromax, which contributed to his drowsy state.

"It's a rare case," said Crown prosecutor Greg Marchant. "I've been doing this work for five years, and I can only remember one drug-impairment case involving (marijuana)."

Can you test a driver for marijuana impairment? Not without his permission - or a court order. Because alcohol distributes evenly throughout the body, a breath test actually gives a very near estimate of how much booze made it to the brain.

Police officers can also force you to take a roadside breath test on suspicion, or as part of a random checkstop.

Cannabis is complicated. The active ingredient in weed, for instance, collects in fatty tissues. Breath samples are useless. Even blood samples aren't completely reliable - and they're not much good from a legal point of view.

"Police have no legal right to compel a blood test, even if they suspect impairment," said local criminal lawyer Robert Shaigec. "A blood sample is considered intrusive under the law. A breath sample isn't."

Let's settle something right now: marijuana does impair your ability to drive safely. I know I'm going to get a lot of e-mails from lifetime weed smokers claiming the stuff makes them better drivers.

Not true. Wise up.

"It impairs visual function, your ability to follow moving objects," said Doug Beirness, senior research associate with the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.

"Drivers under the influence of marijuana tend to show slower reaction times, an inability to respond adequately to unexpected events. They're easily startled, and they have trouble deciding what to do in an emergency situation."

Marijuana has one effect it doesn't share with alcohol: people high on weed tend to be very aware of their impaired state. So while drunks drive recklessly, a driver high on cannabis will more often drive slightly below the speed limit and leave larger gaps between his car and other traffic.

But he's still impaired - when something goes wrong, studies show the stoned driver is at a higher risk of being responsible for a collision. His diminished reflexes make him an unsafe driver, even if he's driving under the posted limit. And when cannabis is combined with booze, the likelihood of an accident increases again.

But because a lot of people think driving stoned is safe, a lot of people are doing it. A recent study found roughly 2% of Ontarians reported driving under the influence of cannabis in the previous year. Among regular users, that percentage jumped to 23%.

There's no legal limit for cannabis impairment in the Criminal Code, because there's no practical way to test for it. A British company has a patent on a device that tests saliva for marijuana's active ingredient, and Australian cops are using it. But it's not cleared for Canadian courts.

In the meantime, police have something called the Drug Recognition Expertise protocol. Crafted by the RCMP, its a checklist of signs and symptoms used by cops to detect impairment by all sorts of drugs, weed included. There are five DRE-trained officers in Alberta now, and another 24 should be trained by the end of November.

"But again, we can't compel a driver to submit to a DRE test," said RCMP Cpl. Evan Graham, national DRE co-ordinator. "There was a bill before Parliament that would have given us that power, but it died with the election."

"Basically, police are left with their own observations as evidence. Was the driver slurring his speech, was he weaving in the lane?" said Beirness.

"But in the absence of medical evidence of impairment, that's probably not going to be enough for a conviction. Any lawyer could get the charge tossed in about two minutes."

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Buzzby

Why is this about marijuana and not the prescription drugs?


Depending on how much earlier in the day, the marijuana might have nothing to do with the accident at all.


They fail to mention whether he obtained these drugs under prescription or illegally.


And we have no way of knowing if this case involved marijuana impairment.


I wonder why they don't mention saliva tests? They're non-invasive and come closest to determining if the person has used marijuana in the relatively recent past.


Just as with alcohol, impairment is dose-related. It's not illegal to drive "drunk" until your blood alcohol reaches a set level. Why should it be illegal to drive with any amount of cannabis in your system?


If they polled beer drinkers, I wonder what percentage would report driving after having a beer or two? The law sets limits for how impaired you have to be on alcohol before it becomes a crime. The same should apply to marijuana users, possibly by giving them field sobriety tests. I drive technically "under the influence" but I'd never drive "stoned".


Ah! That's why they didn't mention saliva tests.

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stonerfromohio

Buzzby needs to go argue some high up people on TV or something about pot... after that it would for sure be legalized. No matter the article he seems to convince me to beleive him and that pot isnt that bad which was my orignal conclusion and just reinstates it.

Logos

This is why Stoners are generally found playing hackey sack, skateboarding, motocross, etc...

I recall learning how to windsurf one day and being told that I was the fastest learner they had ever taught. I was truly stoned at the time.

This article is pure hogwash, and of the three scientific studies I have seen (they should be around here somewhere) all state that a slight cannabis influence actually makes one a slightly safer driver, but that the drivers reaction times and ability to deal with the complexities of driving are diminished the more one consumes.

It should be treaded no different than alcohol, and someone too impaired to drive should be fairly obvious.

Though, I can honestly say that when I'm too stoned to drive, I don't want to anyway. Sitting on the couch is much more enlightening.

Visualize Drug Peace!

dedbr

I know Buzzby's getting ready to have a stroke, hold on old buddy, and this rep had a question for me that I really couldn't answer on the spot.

He asked me if I thought if everyone who smoked herb should be allowed to drive when they were stoned. I said no, but.....

He said there were no buts, his job was to consider the greater good for the greater amount of people. When they passed the new OVI law here in Ohio, they knew it wasn't perfect, no law ever is, but they needed something because young kids were getting into accidents and herb was involved in a greater number each year. I didn't know this.

I came out with the same arguments that Logos did, but to no avail. He said until a test could come out that could show impairment over the last 24 hours, they had to use what they had, a urine screen.

We are fighting an uphill battle, but we are winning because ten years ago this wouldn't of even been considered. There is hope sometimes with every loss.....


Some Where In Ded Land.......

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Buzzby

Hey, Logos! Welcome home! We haven't seen you around here for almost a year!

Buzzby

Huh? Why?

How about a videotaped field sobriety test? It would measure impairment without worrying about the source of that impairment. I think this would be much fairer than the current process of testing for blood alcohol content or the presence of drug metabolites in a person's body.

People have very different reactions to drugs. Some can get drunk on one beer, making them impaired but not over the legal limit for BAC. Others can drink a six-pack and function quite normally. The police, in their attempts to make the roads safer, should be concerned with the level of impairment, not on what a driver has in his body.

If that's the case, they'd save a lot more lives by raising the driving age to 21 than by persecuting people whose driving isn't impaired. Teenagers (or their parents) pay astronomical insurance premiums for a reason. They're the worst drivers on the road. They're effectively impaired just by being behind the wheel.