The bill in Colorado to establish a 5ng/ml per se DUID statute for delta-9 THC in the blood is back.  We had reported how the Judiciary Committee had changed the bill to one requiring much further study of the marijuana DUID issue.  Now it has been brought back by the Appropriations Committee, with the study language stripped and the 5ng/ml language put back in.

(Colorado Independent) The Judiciary Committee was previously convinced by expert testimony and a blood test conducted on Westword’s marijuana critic, William Breathes, that showed even after 18 hours and a medical test confirming his sobriety that Breathes still tested over three times the THC limit to drive.

The bill is set to be heard Tuesday for second reading where the issue is likely to be debated. However, Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, who supported striking the THC limits in the DUI bill, said the bill, with THC limits, was likely to make it to the governor’s desk.

According to the Cannabis Therapy Institute, a medical marijuana advocacy group that has largely been fighting marijuana legislation this year, Carroll said she did not have the votes to kill the bill.

While many testified at the Judiciary hearing that 25 nanograms might be an acceptable level for a DUI per se, the state’s law enforcement agencies disagreed and stated that 5 nanograms may even be too high.

The problem is assuming there is a magic number related to body chemistry that can determine impairment.  A 100lb woman smoking one puff off her first joint might be too impaired to drive.  A 260lb man who tokes often chiefing a whole joint alone might be a perfectly fine driver.

Yes, we have data that shows 5ng/ml indicates recent use and observable deficits in coordination and reaction can be detected at that level.  But like all studies, it describes a statistical observation that can never be a 100% proof.  And the people who are most likely to be the exceptions on the flat ends of the bell curve are going to be the sickest patients who consume the most medicine most often.

Even if a toker is not as good a driver as when he is sober, that tells us nothing about whether he is fit to drive.  We accept that first time teenage drivers are going to be on the road as well as elderly folks.  If we were giving letter grades, maybe a driver is an A+ driver and when he’s stoned he’s a B.  Should he be punished when we allow the C- teenager and the D+ elderly driver on the road?

Blood chemistry can be a piece of evidence in establishing whether someone has consumed and could be a part of making a case that someone is impaired.  But to set a strict 5ng/ml as the only criteria is not scientifically valid and not just.  It is simply a way to streamline the conviction of cannabis consumers some of whom may be innocent of driving impaired.

I exaggerate… but not by much…

(Ha’aretz) Patients who use marijuana for medical purposes must wait six hours after smoking the drug to drive a car, the Health Ministry is set to announce soon.

The effects of THC in the bloodstream have been studied extensively and it’s generally accepted that levels of 5ng/ml of THC in blood roughly corresponds to the impairment one might feel at a 0.05 blood-alcohol level.  Israel considers drivers to be per se impaired at that 0.05 blood-alcohol content.

That 5ng/ml threshold is generally achieved within one, maybe two hours of smoking or vaporizing cannabis.  After that, THC levels drop quickly, as does one’s impairment.  So to ban any medical marijuana patients from driving for six hours after medicating does not match the science and stands only to effectively ban patients from driving at all.

The new regulation will completely prohibit drivers of public or commercial vehicles from smoking the drug for medicinal purposes.

Because if you’re a bus driver, train operator, or trucker, even six hours isn’t long enough to wait before driving.  Your doctor-recommended choice of herbal medicine alone is enough to consider you too much of a risk to the public.  No sir, it’s Vicodin, Percocet, Darvocet, and OxyContin if you’re battling chronic pain.  It’s constipation-inducing drugs for your seizures or spasms and pills you have to swallow for your extreme nausea if you want to keep your driving job.

In recent months, the use of medical marijuana has risen in Israel, according to Health Ministry figures.

Up to now, some 4,000 permits have been given for marijuana use for medical purposes. The mini1stry believes that after final regulations are ironed out for the use of medicinal marijuana, some 40,000 patients in Israel will use the narcotic.

It’s not a narcotic, sorry, it is a cannabinoid.  And only with medical marijuana would the act of increasing tenfold the numbers of patients finding safe, effective, non-toxic relief be considered something to be alarmed about.

"Gee, I wonder if smoking pot impairs driving skills?"

(LA Times) I had been asked by Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich to help determine whether, and how, marijuana impairs driving. He recruited more than two dozen police officers from various Southern California agencies and the CHP to bear witness and study the differences between driving while high and driving while drunk.

I’m not really a smoker, though, so I was concerned that I might get knocked on my heels and skew the results. But Trutanich and many cops believe that if Proposition 19 passes next month and marijuana is as legal as potato chips and nearly as cheap, more new users will be driving under the influence, so the experiment would be worthwhile. Trutanich also noted that users often have no clue as to the potency of the grass they buy, and it varies wildly.

I thought I could drive pretty well. For several minutes I concentrated on slaloming, parking and then finally the dreaded traffic signal.  It didn’t seem to me that I was as impaired as I would have been after a few beers or glasses of wine or if I was one of the morons who drive while texting and yakking on cellphones.

But when I finished, Sgt. Nelms said I was less confident than I had been before smoking. He had to admit I hadn’t bombed on the slalom and parking challenges, wobbling only a few traffic cones. “They both show impairment across the board,” Sgt. Nelms announced after we were put through another round of field sobriety tests.

If Carmen Trutanich were really interested in the science of marijuana use and driving, he could have just asked us rather than performing a wildly unscientific publicity stunt with a beat writer and a radio host (KABC’s Peter Tilden also participated).

As our own Paul Armentano notes after compiling research from the US Dept of Transportation:

Although acute cannabis intoxication following smoking has been shown to mildly impair psychomotor skills, this impairment is seldom severe or long lasting. In closed course and driving simulator studies, marijuana’s acute effects on psychomotor performance include minor impairments in tracking (eye movement control) and reaction time, as well as variation in lateral positioning, headway (drivers under the influence of cannabis tend to follow less closely to the vehicle in front of them), and speed (drivers tend to decrease speed following cannabis inhalation). In general, these variations in driving behavior are noticeably less consistent or pronounced than the impairments exhibited by subjects under the influence of alcohol. Also, unlike subjects impaired by alcohol, individuals under the influence of cannabis tend to be aware of their impairment and try to compensate for it accordingly, either by driving more cautiously or by expressing an unwillingness to drive altogether.

There is no doubt that cannabis use will impair your driving abilities, no matter what you think or what countless long-time tokers will tell you.  That is why NORML has always had a “No Driving” policy for those who have recently used cannabis.  That’s why Prop 19 maintains the laws against driving under the influence, which Trutanich has prosecuted all this time that marijuana has been illegal.

But will marijuana legalization lead to mayhem on the freeways of LA (I mean, more than there is now)?  Hardly.  People who have been smoking marijuana while its been illegal are going to keep smoking when it is legal, so the current users are a wash in any debate about driving.  They aren’t going to be any higher than they are now and they aren’t going to be more likely to drive than they are now, because the cops still have the same power to pull them over for demonstrably impaired driving as they do now.

Trutanich is basing this experiment on the new tokers, though.  He theorizes that new, naive users won’t have the experience to know how potent their herb is or how much that impairs them.  (Which, if you think about it, means Trutanich is implying that the experienced users aren’t that much of a driving threat.)  The problem with that theory is that the new users will be the ones who were not using marijuana because they respected and obeyed the law that makes marijuana illegal.  So these people who were so paranoid about not smoking an illegal joint in a state where marijuana use is ubiquitous are suddenly going to become lawbreakers who think nothing of driving impaired?

Don’t get me wrong – marijuana impairment on our roadways is nothing to tolerate.  A very real danger exists with marijuana use and driving, especially when combined with alcohol use – marijuana seems to exacerbate the impairing effects of the alcohol.  The key to dealing with the issue, just as we have successfully dealt with drunk driving, is public education, societal pressure, and strict enforcement of DUID laws.

Paul Armentano has the latest National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded study on marijuana and driving.  The prohibitionists really only have two rhetorical weapons left, the “What About the Children?!?” fright and the “Stoned Drivers on the Freeway!” scare.  In service of the latter, a study just released looked at sex-related differences among drivers exposed to either cannabis cigarettes or non-impairing placebo cigarettes.

During the course study, subjects were asked to respond to various simulated events associated with automobile crash risk — such as avoiding a driver who was entering an intersection illegally, deciding to stop or go through changing traffic lights, responding to the presence of emergency vehicles, avoiding colliding a dog who entered into traffic, and maintaining safe driving during a secondary (in-the-car) auditory distraction. Subjects performed these tests sober, and then shortly (30 minutes) after smoking a single marijuana cigarettes (or placebo).

The results?

“No sex differences or interactions of sex and marijuana were observed for any of the driving tasks. Participants receiving active marijuana decreased their speed more so than those receiving the placebo cigarette during a distracted section of the drive. An overall effect of marijuana was seen for the mean speed during the distracted driving (PASAT section). [N]o other changes in driving performance were found.”

So when it comes to avoiding the driver in the intersection, reacting to traffic lights, responding to the ambulance, and dodging the dog in the road, people who smoked a joint a half hour before performed as well as they did when sober.  The only difference was that they drove a bit slower when you talk to them or they’re listening to music in the car, which would be… uh… bad?

The study obviously confirms what the government has been telling us: cannabis-using drivers are dangerous.

Huh?

“Persons smoking the placebo cigarette showed an improvement in performance of the PASAT during the driving task, likely attributable to practice effects. Under the influence of marijuana, however, no differences were found between PASAT performance during practice testing and while driving. Participants who smoked active marijuana decreased their speed during this section of the drive, suggesting additional compensatory skills were used.”

I know, it hurts to have to think this way.  If you smoked pot, you’re impaired because you didn’t get better on the test the second time around!  It’s like saying the NBA playoff team that wins Game 2 by five points really lost because they won Game 1 by five points and they really should be winning by more against the same team the second time around.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Under the influence of active marijuana, participants exhibited increased drowsiness, although this did not appear to affect their driving. Participants under the influence of marijuana failed to benefit from prior experience on a distracter task as evidenced by a decrease in speed and a failure to show expected practice effects. This study supports the existing literature that marijuana does affect simulated driving performance, particularly on complex tasks such as divided attention. It is anticipated that many teenagers and young adults driving under the influence of marijuana are doing so while conversing with friends in the car, listening to music, talking on the cell phone and/or text messaging others. These behaviors divide the driver’s attention and are particularly dangerous under the influence of marijuana.

Remarkable, isn’t it?  Young people might smoke marijuana and have conversations and listen to music while driving, which will make them drive slower, while not having any problems dealing with other drivers, emergency vehicles, dogs and traffic lights.

So we have to arrest and lock up adults who might use it and devastate their lives.

But feel free to have a beer at the restaurant, tavern, pub, bar, club, or stadium.  Your car will be waiting in the parking l0t.

(Change.org Criminal Justice) Advocates for marijuana reform frequently argue that the drug should be legalized because it’s safe. This is generally true, and I support legalization for this and many other reasons. But when it comes to driving and safety, legalization advocates often go a step too far — claiming that driving under the influence of marijuana is not dangerous and that marijuana causes zero deaths each year. These misleading arguments are harming the reform movement.

In the next couple of paragraphs the author calls out the authors of “Marijuana is Safer”, so I’ll leave that to Paul Armentano to cover.  I’ve never claimed that driving under the influence of marijuana is not dangerous, though I have pointed out how it is safer than driving under the influence of alcohol or driving while text-messaging.

I also am increasingly perturbed by a society that thinks nothing of parking lots at bars and .08 BAC laws having zero tolerance for the notion of cannabis-using drivers.  The fact that we have a per se standard of .08 BAC for alcohol-using drivers means that at below .08 BAC, the state has to prove you were actually too impaired to drive, not simply that you’d been drinking.  We tolerate the idea that a big guy like me (6’0″ 260lbs.) might be able to drink one beer and be OK to drive, but the notion of driving after one puff off a joint is unthinkable?  We tolerate people driving their cars to bars for the express purpose of becoming impaired knowing full well that not 100% of them have designated drivers, but were supposed to worry that legalizing pot will lead to blood on the highways?

So, I want to say to the commenters who frequently write here and elsewhere that driving under the influence of marijuana is not risky: you’re wrong. Not only are you wrong, but you’re spreading a dangerous myth that could cause deadly accidents and will hurt the chances for marijuana reform in the United States. To those who cite that stat that alcohol causes 75,000 deaths each year in the U.S. and marijuana causes zero: you’re wrong, too. Marijuana causes far, far fewer deaths than alcohol (maybe 0.1%) , but the number is not zero. Fatal accidents like this one and this one confirm that.

It’s always funny to me how one or two stories of people being helped by medical marijuana are just anecdotes that don’t scientifically prove anything, but one or two stories of a person pleading guilty to a fatal marijuana DUI wreck proves how dangerous marijuana and driving are.

The author, I believe, is purposefully excluding the context under which most of us say “marijuana never killed anyone”.  I am always referring to marijuana being non-toxic and incapable of overdose.  I try to be careful and only cite the 35,000 alcohol deaths from chronic conditions like the 18,000 whose livers fail or the 4,500 who suffer strokes and heart attacks or the 2,200 who get cancer.  I try not to include the 40,000 whose alcohol use causes acute conditions like the 14,000 who wreck their car, boat, or plane or the 19,000 who fall, commit suicide, or are murdered, or the 2,200 who freeze, burn, or drown.

If we want to include all of the ways in which marijuana might lead to death of its users, then, indeed, it is false to say nobody ever died from marijuana.  First we’d have to add in all the people who’ve been shot by police, murdered by dealers, or died choking on their own vomit due to lack of medical marijuana in a prison cell.  We’d have to include people like the two drivers in the examples above, plus all the people who fell off a cliff because they tripped while stoned and the people who die of a heart attack from the obesity they got from the munchies.  As you admit, that number is still probably 0.1% the deaths compared to alcohol under all conditions, which is why we are also careful to say marijuana is not harmless, but it is far less harmful than alcohol and tobacco.  (Even that percentage is high, I think, as that would be 75 pot-related deaths per year.)

To show that we’re serious about responsible reform, marijuana reformers need to take a stand against driving under the influence of pot. Each of us can do our part.

Fine, I’ll take that stand: if your consumption of marijuana has led you to be as impaired as someone with a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 or above, do not drive a car.  If you’re at a public event, wait to drive for as long as they force the beer drinkers to wait before you get behind the wheel.

SAN DIEGO, Sept. 3 /PRNewswire/ — San Diego DUI lawyer Lawrence Taylor claims that California DUI laws should not be applied to marijuana usage. Unlike alcohol and many drugs, he says, marijuana probably does not impair driving.

On the one hand, the California Department of Justice has found that marijuana impairs psychomotor abilities that are functionally related to driving, particularly at high-dose levels or among inexperienced users. (“Marijuana and Alcohol: A Driver Performance Study,” California Office of Traffic Safety Project No. 087902)

However, the San Diego DUI defense attorney points out, two federal studies contradict this.

In one, the U.S. Department of Transportation conducted DUI research with a fully interactive simulator on the effects of alcohol and marijuana, alone and in combination, on driver-controlled behavior and performance. Although alcohol was found consistently and significantly to cause impairment, marijuana had only an occasional effect.

Accidents and speeding tickets reliably increased with alcohol, but no marijuana or combined alcohol-marijuana influence was noted. (“The Effects of Alcohol on Driver-Controlled Behavior in a Driving Simulator, Phase I”(DOT-HS-806-414).)

Taylor, who heads a large firm of DUI attorneys with offices in Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, Riverside and San Francisco, points to another more recent report. Entitled “Marijuana and Actual Performance” (DOT-HS-808-078), it also found that “THC is not a profoundly impairing drug….It apparently affects controlled information processing in a variety of laboratory tests, but not to the extent which is beyond the individual’s ability to control when he is motivated and permitted to do so in driving.”

The researchers found that it “appears not possible to conclude anything about a driver’s impairment on the basis of his/her plasma concentrations of THC and THC-COOH determined in a single sample.”

Sounds like a “whoo-hoo!” moment, huh?  Well, not so fast.  NORML’s Principles of Responsible Use states “The responsible cannabis consumer does not operate a motor vehicle or other dangerous machinery while impaired by cannabis.”

The $64,000 question*, then, is “what defines impaired?”  I can tell you that one puff off a vape bag full of Oregon’s finest will severely impair your average Kansas ditchweed smoker, while that same puff for a 5g/day Oregon patient won’t even break his concentration from completing the New York Times crossword.

The same phenomenon exists for alcohol; the alcoholic can seem perfectly capable with as many drinks under his belt as would knock out your average sorority sister.  But as a society, we decided that there should be an absolute measurable physical limit – .08 blood alcohol content – that defines impairment per se, that is, if you’re over .08 you’re too impaired even if you’re not really too impaired.

As always when there is a story about cannabis drug testing and driving, I called on NORML’s Deputy Director, Paul Armentano.  Here’s what he had to say:

As someone who is somewhat regularly brought in as a consultant for the defense in DUI-marijuana cases I can report, contrary to attorney Taylor’s claim [above], that there are in fact several available studies associating certain blood-THC levels (but not carboxy-THC levels) with psychomotor impairment and/or increased risk of traffic accident. These include:

• Drummer et al. 2004. The involvement of drugs in drivers killed in Australian road traffic crashes. Accident, Analysis and Prevention 36: 239-248.
• Grotenhermen et al. 2007. Developing per se limits for driving under cannabis. Addiction 102: 1910-1917.
• Bedard et al. 2007. The impact of cannabis on driving. Canadian Journal of Public Health 98: 6-11.
• Laumon et al. 2005. Cannabis intoxication and fatal road crashes in France: a population base case-control study. British Medical Journal 331: 1371-1377.
• Ramaekers et al. 2004. Dose related risk of motor vehicle crashes after cannabis use. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 73: 109-119.
• Khiabani et al. 2006. Relationship between THC concentration in blood and impairment in apprehended drivers. Traffic Injury Prevention 7: 111-116.

Remember that blood-THC is a measurement of the actual impairing substance (the metabolized 11-THC which is actually more psychoactive than the initial 9-THC that you inhale), while carboxy-THC (or THC-COOH) is the inactive metabolite they detect on the pee tests that doesn’t prove any impairment, only past use.

My personal preference would be that all chemical measurements of impairment, even blood-alcohol levels, be abandoned in favor of punishing people for actual impairment.  If a person is driving poorly enough to warrant a traffic stop and then cannot pass a field impairment test (walk the line, touch your nose, etc.) they should be busted for driving while impaired, no matter whether that impairment is alcohol, THC, anti-histamines, lack of sleep, or illness.

But since BAC measuring isn’t going anywhere, I suppose that we’ll have to adopt some measure of THC blood testing and some per se limit that defines impairment.  I’ll bet soon we’ll see a device like diabetics use to test blood sugar – one quick prick on the finger tip, a drop of blood on a test strip, and in 90 seconds we know what you’re on.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Young men who are impulsive thrill-seekers are more likely to admit to driving while high on marijuana, Canadian researchers report.

Men who drove under the influence of cannabis were also more likely to report certain risky driving behaviors, and tend to get in more accidents, Drs. Isabelle Richer and Jacques Bergeron of the University of Montreal say.

After alcohol, cannabis is the mind-altering substance most often found in the urine or blood of drivers after a crash, the researchers note in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention. Studies have shown that people’s driving skills are impaired within the first hour after smoking pot, they add. And it’s also possible, according to Richer and Bergeron, that people who get behind the wheel after smoking marijuana are also by nature more likely to be dangerous drivers.

Study participants with high scores on personality tests measuring sensation seeking and impulsivity were more likely to say they had driven under the influence of cannabis in the past year. The pot-smoking drivers were also more likely to report having engaged in risky driving, meaning driving in a careless way that could hurt others but isn’t intended to do so; and negative emotional driving, for example, getting angry with other motorists. These men were also more likely to exhibit these behaviors in the simulation tests. There was a slight increased likelihood that the pot smokers would get in crashes, and they were also more likely to admit to drinking and driving.

via Pot-smokers may take more risks on the road – News Wires – CNBC.com.

OK, so what you’re telling me is that young men who are “impulsive sensation seekers” are likely to:

• Smoke pot,
• Drive risky,
• Get road rage.

Color me surprised.  Impulsive young men do stupid things.  At sixteen, I once stole my dad’s pickup and gas credit card to hook up with a girl who lived in Tri-Cities, Washington whom I’d met just that week in Boise, Idaho, all on impulse, not thinking that the credit card receipts would totally ruin my alibi lie.  I also drove fairly recklessly, almost wrecking the truck as I went off the road and spun out in the median of the freeway, while I was completely sober (I hadn’t touched alcohol or cannabis at that point.)  Go figure.  Teenage hormones made me a worse driving risk than cannabis ever has.

The fly in the ointment in this news report for me is “cannabis is the mind-altering substance most often found in the urine or blood of drivers after a crash”.  No kidding – considering that cannabis is the third most used substance after alcohol and tobacco, it wouldn’t be surprising at all to find cannabis in people’s blood or urine.  With the urine test, the cannabis can turn up even weeks after smoking; with the blood, days.

What none of this proves is that they are “driving while high on marijuana”.  In most of America, we have a .08 blood alcohol standard – above that, you are, per se, impaired.  What that implies, then, is that below .08, it is possible you are not too impaired to drive.

Similarly, we have a whole host of pharmaceuticals whose ads say, “Until you know how you may react to Fuqitol, don’t drive or operate heavy machinery,” which suggests to me that once you do know how you may react, it is possible you are not too impaired to drive.

Yet with cannabis, these studies will point to drivers who’ve been in a crash who’ve had inactive, non-impairing marijuana metabolites in their urine and proclaim, aha!, “Young men who are impulsive thrill-seekers are more likely to admit to driving while high on marijuana!”

At NORML, we are clear – you should never smoke and drive.  (Mostly for self-preservation – the vast majority of possession pot busts are made during traffic encounters with police.)  Smoking and driving is not “responsible use”.  However, these reports that imply a huge social risk from cannabis-impaired drivers are way overblown.  I’ve said it before – when someone can show me the bar that has only taxicabs in its parking lot, you can talk to me about the social danger of stoned drivers.

Oakland, CA — The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) issued a new policy yesterday with regard to how it treats qualified medical marijuana patients. The DMV Driver Safety Procedure Manual was revised to include reference to medical marijuana, stating that “use of medicinal marijuana approved by a physician should be handled in the same manner as any other prescription medication which may affect safe driving.” The manual states that the existence of medical marijuana use “does not, in itself, constitute grounds for a license withdrawal action.” 

The change in DMV policy was the result of a lawsuit filed on November 19, 2008 by medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) on behalf of Rose Johnson, a 53-year-old patient from Atwater, whose driving license was revoked because of her status as a patient. Despite Ms. Johnson’s clean driving record, not having caused an accident in 37 years of driving, the DMV revoked her license on July 26, 2008. According to the DMV, Ms. Johnson’s license was revoked “because of…[an] addiction to, or habitual use of, [a] drug,” thereby rendering her unable to safely operate a motor vehicle, even though no evidence existed to substantiate this claim. In January, as a result of the lawsuit and a positive driving test by Ms. Johnson, the DMV reinstated her license and issued the new policy before the case had a chance to be heard in Superior Court.

Advocates assert that the DMV policy of suspending and revoking the licenses of medical marijuana patients was widespread, occurring in at at least 8 California counties, including Alameda, Butte, Contra Costa, Glenn, Merced, Placer, Sacramento, and Sonoma. License revocations by the DMV, which have been based on a person’s status as a medical marijuana patient, are often rationalized by calling the drivers “drug abusers” despite no evidence of the claim. 

In California, this “drug addict” language was being used to deny medical marijuana patients right to drive.  Here in Oregon, “drug addict” language was used to revoke or deny medical marijuana patients their right to a concealed weapons permit.  In most medical marijuana states, employers can deny a medical marijuana patient’s right to work when a pre-employment urine test marks them as a “drug addict”.  Across the country women who are using marijuana medically to treat the nausea of morning sickness are considered “drug addicts” when their newborn’s urine tests positive for THC metabolites and are denied the right to hold their own baby.

Meanwhile, prescription drugs are advertised on television all day that say, “until you know how Dammitol effects you, don’t drive or operate heavy machinery.”  Nobody thinks to take away the concealed handgun permit from the guy who gets an alcohol DUI.  You can show up to your workplace drug testing center drunk and still pee clean enough for a job.  Nobody takes the newborn away from the morbidly obese mother who has been passing on lousy nutrition to her baby in the womb.  It’s funny to me how much danger and risk we are willing to tolerate as a society from alcohol, prescription drugs, and obesity, but that little cannabis flower that makes you happy and never killed anyone, that’s the one we scrutinize for safety.

If passed, Senate Bill 5 would mandate criminal penalties for any person who operates a motor vehicle with any measurable level of THC in their blood. This proposal would improperly impact cannabis consumers because THC can remain detectable at low levels in the blood of daily marijuana users for up to 1 or 2 days after past use. In the case of chronic smokers, THC may be detectable in the blood for even longer periods of time. (More information on this subject is available from NORML here.)

Someone who smokes marijuana is impaired as a driver — at most — for a few hours, not days. To treat marijuana smokers as if they are impaired, even when the drug’s effects have long worn off, is illogical and unfair.

In addition, Kentucky already has laws on the books targeting and prosecuting drivers who operate a motor vehicle “under the influence” of illicit drugs. Senate Bill 5 creates a separate crime of “drugged driving” that is, potentially, divorced from impairment and that could jail motorists for simply having consumed an illicit substance at some prior, unspecified date.

Please take a moment today to contact your elected officials and urge them to oppose Senate Bill 5. If your senator sits on the Senate Rules Committee then it is especially important that he or she hears from you. For your convenience, a pre-written letter will be e-mailed to your state representative when you enter your contact information below.

SB 212 – Hearing Next Tuesday Morning, Jan. 20th

Can you come to Helena very early next Tuesday – and stay until late afternoon or evening the following day?
 
We need help next Tuesday morning to oppose a terrible bill – SB 212 – that just moments ago was scheduled for hearing that morning.  (Info about SB 212 below.)
 
 Hearing: Senate Judiciary Committee, Room 303 of Capitol Building (“old Supreme Court chambers”)
 
When: 9 am, Tuesday, January 20
  
You can read SB 212 here:  http://data.opi.mt.gov/bills/2009/billpdf/SB0212.pdf <http://data.opi.mt.gov/bills/2009/billpdf/SB0212.pdf> 
 
SB 212 would require THC blood-testing of any registered patient/caregiver found or thought by law enforcement officials to be driving “under the influence” (which already is illegal under the law).  Meanwhile, the THC threshold specified in the bill is extremely low – so low that most bona fide patients would fail the blood test even if they hadn’t medicated for a day or longer.  And the bill’s penalty for failing the THC blood test – loss of patient privileges for life.

This bill violates privacy (and other constitutional) rights, and would carry penalties that are truly unprecedented.
 
Consider:  A person guilty of multiple drunk-driving incidents can lose his/her driver’s license – and might even serve time in jail – but would NOT permanently be forbidden to drink alcohol.  A person who committed driving violations while under the influence of too many prescription pain relievers might similarly lose driving rights for a period of time – but would NEVER lose the basic human right to receive needed prescription medicine from a physician.
 
Patients & Families United will strongly oppose this bill, as you might imagine.
 
Senate Judiciary Committee

Please call your friends and relatives and ask them to help us defeat SB 212.  Everyone who cares about the welfare of patients should call to leave messages for members of the Senate Judiciary Committee urging a “Do Not Pass” committee vote.
 
The number to call to leave messages for legislators is: 406-444-4800.

Committee members who should receive messages are:
 
Sen. Gary Perry, chairman (R-Manhattan)
Sen. Jim Shockley, vice-chair (R-Victor)
Sen. Aubyn Curtiss (R-Fortine)
Sen. John Esp (R-Big Timber)
Sen. Greg Hinkle (R-Thompson Falls)
Sen. Larry Jent (D-Bozeman)
Sen. Carol Juneau (D-Browning)
Sen. Jesse Laslovich (D-Anaconda)
Sen. Dan McGee (R-Laurel)
Sen. Lynda Moss (D-Billings)
Sen. Terry Murphy (R-Cardwell)

And if you can stay in Helena for an extra day, there is HB 73 which you can lend your support to:

Hearing on Wednesday, Jan. 21 on PFU’s HB 73

Next Wednesday, January 21, the first of two medical marijuana improvement bills that Patients & Families United has developed – HB 73 – will be heard by the House Human Services Committee.

See the news/alert we sent last night for more detailed information.

You can read HB 73 here: http://data.opi.mt.gov/bills/2009/billpdf/HB0073.pdf

Details on the hearing:

Time: 3 pm, Wednesday January 21

Where: Room 157, ground floor of capitol building

Patients & Families United will host a lunch in Helena for those who can join us for the hearing. The lunch will begin at 11:30 am and end by 1:30 pm, leaving us plenty of time to get to the capitol and “take charge” of the hearing room before legislators arrive. More info on the lunch location as the day approaches.

Again, the members of the committee who need to receive phone messages urging a “Do Pass” recommendation for HB 73 are:

House Human Services Committee
Arlene Becker, chairperson (D-Billings)
Mary Caffero, vice-chair (D-Helena)
Pat Ingraham, vice-chair (R-Thompson Falls)
Bill Beck (R-Whitefish)
Julie French (D-Scobey) – our bill’s sponsor!
Tim Furey (D-Milltown)
David Howard (R-Park City)
Chuck Hunter (D-Helena)
Dave McAlpin (D-Missoula)
Michael More (R-Gallatin Gateway)
Pat Noonan (D-Ramsay)
Ken Peterson (R-Billings)
Diane Sands (D-Missoula)
Cary Smith (R-Billings)
Ron Stoker (R-Darby)
Jeff Wellborn (R-Dillon)

To leave a message for these legislators, call: 406-444-4800.