Colorado has some of the most active marijuana activists in the nation. They are also up against some of the most active proponents of positive marijuana law reforms as well.

Colorado state senator Steve King announced that he is working on a proposal that would make it easier for law enforcement to convict people of driving while high. Colorado has been down this DUID proposal before. It is a sticking point of many in law enforcement in the case for legalization. Called a per-se limit, law enforcement insists they need a tool that could identify cannabis-impaired drivers in a similar fashion to the .08 blood-alcohol limit from drunk driving. The blood-alcohol limit is a powerful weapon in helping law enforcement get drunk driving charges to stick. A driver does not have much of a legal challenge of their impairment in a court room if their blood alcohol limit is over that .08 legal definition.

The Republican Senator from Grand Junction said that it is time to make people deal with the consequences of making the bad decision to drive high and put people’s lives at risk. Senator King is not quite sure yet if he will include the 5 nanogram limit that was included in a similar bill that failed last year. The Colorado legislature considered a bill last year that would have made anyone testing over the 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood to be found as driving intoxicated and face all the criminal penalties associated with drunk driving. But the limit was debated, and the research was just not conclusive enough to agree that everyone is impaired at that level.

However, instead of raising the limit to try and get the bill passed, Senator King might include a zero tolerance policy in his proposal. He said that under such a scenario drivers who had any amount of THC would be driving under the influence. He told the Denver Post on Friday, “If you have THC on board, you have to make a decision: ‘I have to call a cab. I have to rely on public transportation. At the forefront of that is the protection and the safety of the traveling public of Colorado. Driving is not a right. It is a privilege.”

The issue has been studied and debated before in Colorado, a zero limit tolerance level may be an even harder bill to get passed. After the failure of last years bill, lawmakers had the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice study the issue to help them clarify the science behind the THC driving limit. Not even the commissioners armed with all the scientific data brought up in the debate and tasked with the goal of just making a recommendation could reach a consensus, so no recommendation was made.

External Links:

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_19738440

But still, pot stores where you can buy an ounce and have it and smoke it and not be harassed by the man... so long as you get a designated driver.

The former head of the Seattle FBI office has come out in support of Washington State’s I-502 legalization (without any home cultivation and new unscientific 5ng/mL THC / under 21 zero tolerance per se DUID for pot) initiative*

(Seattle Times) Mandigo believes it is time to change course on the 74-year-old federal ban on marijuana and has endorsed a proposed state initiative, I-502, which would legalize small amounts of marijuana and regulate sales in state-run pot stores. Mandigo describes drug laws as “discretionary” public policy that are too expensive and carry to many unintended consequences.

Assuming I-502 survives a federal challenge to a state running commercial pot growing and selling operations (they assure us it will) and not leave Washington State with only a new per se DUID law, we’ll have a situation where Washington tries to run a legal recreational system where tokers have to buy state-store weed with taxes an ounce at a time and can’t grow their own, alongside a legal medical system where patients are growing their own and possessing 24 times the amount of tokers.  So, if I’m a patient, like many who are on fixed incomes, why don’t I make some extra cash diverting some of my 24 ounces at prices just below the taxed price of lower-quality state weed?  Will tokers have to carry receipts from the state weed store, lest cops insist the weed is diverted from a patient or illegally home grown?  And why is it I have to get sick to grow my own again?

There’s something telling in the statement from the former FBI head (my emphasis):

There is no question the time has come when government must curtail discretionary programs. If the resources were available, continued enforcement of criminal laws for possession and use of small amounts of marijuana might be a discretionary function of government. But we have gone beyond the point where the resources are available or there is a justifiable cost-benefit to society. There must be an end to sacred cows.

Gee, if we could afford it, we could lock up those potheads, but times are tough.  We have to sacrifice some of our luxuries.  So, what, maybe if the economy picks up we can go back to rounding up mostly minority kids for smoking pot?  Maybe if technologies make it cheap enough to track and monitor and punish them, there will be a justifiable cost-benefit to society!  This is why I fear these economic arguments.  The point needs to be made that the cultivation and use of cannabis is a right.

Make the decision for yourself – I-502 proponent Alison Holcomb and Sensible Washington’s Doug Hiatt debated the issues on our “Legalization Week” on NORML SHOW LIVE.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Meanwhile, the issue of the per se DUID statute added by I-502 is gaining traction in the Washington media:

(Seattle Times) Some legalization advocates, however, have heard enough.

They are primarily concerned about the impact on authorized medical-marijuana patients of the DUI provision, which defines impairment as 5 nanograms of active THC in the bloodstream based on 2005 research. Although I-502 specifically does not pre-empt the state medical-marijuana law, activists believe the DUI provision would apply to existing patients.

Dr. Gil Mobley, who runs a Federal Way clinic catering to medical-marijuana patients, said he recently tested several patients and found they passed cognitive tests even with THC concentrations of up to 47 nanograms. Nearly four hours after one patient medicated, they still tested at 6 nanograms.

“I told them they’d be legally unable to drive if this law passes,” said Mobley. “It’s philosophically, morally and legally wrong.”

Still, what about the rest of us who aren’t patients, who might be above 5ng/mL and also may not be impaired?  I agree that the patients can make the best arguments against the per se standard, but what if that just leads to a “rebuttable presumption” exception for patients, leaving the rest of us sentenced to punishments for impairment we’re not exhibiting?

I presume that proponents of I-502 have already done the math and figured that votes and donations lost among the natural base of legalization proponents will be more than made up for in votes and donations of swing voters whose fears are assuaged by simplistic, bright-line, unscientific DUID standards.

* Covering this I-502 campaign is going to be difficult, especially in context of my ravaging of “Stoners Against Legalization” in the Prop 19 campaign.  Ugh.  I can never tell anyone to vote against legalization, even miserably concocted ends-justify-the-means sausage-factory political calculus like this.  But I can be insistent that everyone is made aware of exactly what kind of legalization we’re looking at.  ”Washington State Legalizes Marijuana” truly would be a game changer… but at what cost?

Lawmakers have ‘indefinitely postponed’ taking any action regarding Legislative Bill 659.

Legislative Bill 659 sought to make it a criminal offense for any person to operate a motor vehicle if any level of marijuana or non-psychoactive marijuana metabolites (byproducts) are present in their blood, saliva, urine, or any other bodily fluid. Because marijuana’s main metabolite, carboxy THC, remains detectable in certain bodily fluids, particularly urine, for weeks or even months after past use, this legislation would have arbitrarily punished drivers for simply having consumed marijuana at some previous, unspecified point in time.

NORML opposed this draconian legislation and thanks in large part to the many e-mails sent by NORML constituents, lawmakers have made it clear that they will take no further action on the measure this session.

Thank you again for helping NORML successfully halt this legislative threat to the cannabis community.

Go here to see the original:
Nebraska Lawmakers Reject Dangerous ‘Drugged Driving’ Legislation

The little red police cars show you the zero-tolerance states. If there is a time next to it, like 24h, that's the mandatory jail time you serve immediately.

(UPDATED with helpful research from Paul Armentano.)

The headline from the Associated Press reads “Gov’t: Drugs were in 1 in 5 drivers killed in 2009“.  The lede for the story is:

About 1 in 5 drivers who were killed last year in car crashes tested positive for drugs, raising concerns about the impact of drugs on auto safety, the government reported Tuesday.

Other outlets like USA Today give it a more chilling headline “U.S.: Third of tests on motorists killed shows drug use“.  The discrepancy results from the AP considering all drivers who were killed when not every driver killed was drug tested.  The USA Today considers the “tests on motorists killed”, thereby discounting the roughly 40% of killed drivers who were never drug tested.  Whatever – 20% of all drivers or 33% of all drivers tested – they’re dead, they drove, there’s drugs, be afraid!

The AP then follows with a second paragraph that points out the obvious logical fallacy of “correlation = causation” – just because dead drivers had drugs in their system doesn’t mean drugs caused the accident that killed them - something the USA Today article never addresses:

Researchers with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the new data underscored a growing problem of people driving with drugs in their systems. But they cautioned that it was not clear that drugs caused the crashes and more research was needed to determine how certain drugs can hinder a person’s ability to drive safely.

However, while AP doesn’t get around to distinguishing what exactly “drugs” refers to until paragraph seven, USA Today opens by explaining we’re talking about all drugs, prescription and recreational:

One-third of all the drug tests done on drivers killed in motor vehicle accidents came back positive for drugs ranging from hallucinogens to prescription pain killers last year — a 5 percentage point increase since 2005, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration reported Tuesday.

Nobody recommends driving while impaired by drugs – legal or illegal.  NORML has maintained this as a core Principle of Responsible Use for years.  But there are many legal prescription drugs that will cause impairment that bear the warning “Until you know how you may be affected by this drug, do not drive or operate heavy machinery,” which suggests to me that once you do know how it affects you, it’s your judgment call.  In fact, one of those drugs is prescription dronabinol, the synthetic cannabinoid THC marketed as “Marinol”.

AP’s seventh paragraph also points out that presence of a drug in your system may have no bearing on whether that drug was impairing you in the first place:

The tests took into account both legal and illegal drugs, including heroin, methadone, morphine, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, LSD, prescription drugs and inhalants. The amount of time the drug could linger in the body varied by drug type, the researchers said, so it was unclear when the drivers had used the drugs prior to the fatal crashes.

Cannabis metabolites can be detectable in urine for weeks and THC itself can be detected blood for at least six hours.  Most illegal drugs can be detected for a few days in urine and a few hours in blood.  Prescription drugs are just as varied.  So we’ve got 20% or 33% of killed drivers who had a drug in their system that may or may not have contributed to the crash that killed them and they may or may not have taken that drug before driving.

For comparison’s sake, USA Today links to the stat that drowsiness was a factor in 17% of all fatal crashes.  You just may be more likely to die in a crash caused by lack of a nap as by taking the pill to get a good night’s sleep.  Are you scared yet?  Well, you should be, because the whole point of scaring you about the drugged drivers is the push for nationwide zero-tolerance DUID laws.  Back to the USA Today:

Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, called the numbers of fatalities involving drugs “alarmingly high,” and called for more states to pass laws making it a crime to have illegal drugs in the body while driving, no matter how much. Seventeen states already have such laws.

The lack of research also presents a problem for lawmakers to develop laws. They can outlaw the use of all illegal drugs while driving, but what about someone who took a prescription sleeping pill a few hours ago?

Since they can outlaw the illegal drugs and there is no political cost in doing so, they will.  These “zero tolerance” laws means if they detect any metabolite of any illegal drug, you are guilty of driving impaired.  Since that joint you smoked could be detectable long after its effects had worn off, you’d be an impaired driver in the eyes of the law even if you were completely sober and unimpaired.  Since marijuana is detectable for much longer periods than most any other drug, legal or illegal, “zero tolerance” laws amount to witch hunts for cannabis consumers behind the wheel.

The irony here is that compared to the threat from drinking drivers, drowsy drivers, texting drivers, and prescription drugged drivers, the threat from drivers using cannabis is negligible.  Just last week we took a look at a study in the Netherlands that showed that experienced users can develop a tolerance to the psychomotor impairing effects of cannabis.  This summer we examined a study performed in Iowa and Connecticut that showed cannabis-using drivers performed as well on a driving simulator after smoking marijuana as they did before smoking marijuana.  (If you’d like the full examination of marijuana and driving, please see Paul Armentano’s impeccable white paper, Cannabis and Driving: A Scientific and Rational Review.)

As for the prescription drugs, there isn’t much political benefit in threatening a majority of your constituents, especially the older ones who do most of the voting, with a DUI charge for the pills they’re required to take every day.  Also consider the lobbying money and clout of Big Pharma that won’t look kindly on strict new driving laws that might cause people to use less pills.

No, the per se limit on prescription drugs isn’t coming to your state anytime soon… but maybe the end of driving privileges for cannabis consumers in your state is.  The seventeen states with current per se DUID laws are:

• Arizona (except for medical marijuana patients), Utah, South Dakota, Illinois, Indiana, Delaware, and Georgia already have these zero tolerance laws for any THC or metabolites of THC – if you toked within the past week, you could already be an impaired driver.
• Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island have zero tolerance for THC in the blood – if you toked before bed you might be an impaired driver in the morning.
• Nevada and Ohio consider you impaired if they detect 2 nanograms (2 billionths of a gram) of THC per milliliter of blood (2ng/ml) and Pennsylvania raises that limit to 5ng/ml.
• Virginia, Minnesota, and North Carolina have zero tolerance laws for drugs that do not include cannabis or its metabolites.

Learn what the DUID laws are in your state.

Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2010-05-13.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

1. Montana Indian tribe declares medical marijuana illegal for tribe members, despite legal medical marijuana statewide in Montana
2. Lake Forest, California, bans dispensaries and claims all in the state are illegal
3. Nebraska Board of Pharmacy investigating benefits and drawbacks of medical marijuana

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by John Doe Radio.com

• Groovin’ Thursday: DJ Slim – “Don’t You Cry”

Behind the Headlines with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

• Zero tolerance per se DUID laws proposed by Obama Administration

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Speaker’s Corner

• Former San Diego Deputy Sheriff Leo Laurance on the CAMP eradication program

If you smoked a joint last week, in eleven states you're as bad as a drunk driver.

From the Obama Administration’s recently released National Drug Control Strategy (hat tip to NORML reader Glen):

Encourage States To Adopt Per Se Drug Impairment Laws [ONDCP]
State laws regarding impaired driving are varied, but most State codes do not contain a separate offense for driving under the influence of drugs (DUID). Therefore, few drivers are identified, prosecuted, or convicted for DUID. Law enforcement personnel usually cite individuals with the easier to prove driving while intoxicated (DWI) alcohol charges. Unclear laws provide vague signals both to drivers and to law enforcement, thereby minimizing the possible preventive benefit of DUID statutes. Fifteen states have passed laws clarifying that the presence of any illegal drug in a driver’s body is per se evidence of impaired driving. ONDCP will work to expand the use of this standard to other states and explore other ways to increase the enforcement of existing DUID laws.

Here are the states President Obama would like to emulate:

1. Arizona: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, mandatory 24 hours jail, up to 6 months upon conviction.
2. Delaware: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites.
3. Georgia: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, mandatory 24 hours jail, up to 12 months upon conviction.
4. Illinois: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, up to 12 months upon conviction.
5. Indiana: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, up to 60 days upon conviction.
6. Michigan: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, up to 93 days upon conviction, vehicle immobilization for up to 180 days.
7. Nevada: 15 ng/ml for cannabis metabolites.
8. Ohio: 15 ng/ml for cannabis metabolites, mandatory 72 hours in jail, up to 6 months upon conviction, 6 month to 3 year license suspension.
9. Pennsylvania: DUID for cannabis metabolites, amount unclear.
10. South Dakota: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites for persons under the age of 21.
11. Utah: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, mandatory 48 hours jail, up to 6 months upon conviction.

Nine of the fifteen states cited have “zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites”.  What this means is that if the inactive (read: non-impairing) THC metabolite (THC-COOH) is detected in the urine of a driver, that driver is impaired in the eyes of the law.  (There are actually 17 states that have per se DUID laws, but Iowa, Minnesota, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Wisconsin exclude metabolites of cannabis.)  Nevada and Ohio have 15 ng/ml levels which are very low; most workplace pre-employment screenings set the initial screening limit at 50 ng/ml.  At the confirmation level of 15 ng/ml, the frequent cannabis user will be positive for perhaps as long as 15 weeks.

Of course, faithful NORML readers and most of the public know that cannabis metabolites can remain detectable in the urine for up to 100 days or longer for a regular cannabis consumer and up to fifteen days for the casual consumer, even after quitting cold turkey.  Metabolites in urine don’t tell you a driver is actually impaired, they tell you someone used cannabis, but not when.  Even the US Department of Transportation admits that a positive test for drug metabolites is “solid proof of drug use within the last few days, it cannot be used by itself to prove behavioral impairment during a focal event.”

Cannabis metabolites are funny things; they don’t eliminate from the body in any predictable fashion. In fact, when you think about it, a metabolite is produced when the body metabolizes, or breaks down, a substance.  The presence of metabolites for THC tells you the body has already broken down the THC!  You could actually call a urine screening for metabolites a non-impairment test!

Now some of these laws do have per se standards for actual THC in the blood and you could argue that is a more realistic determinant of current impairment, but do you think most cash-strapped city, county, and state police are going to use an expensive, invasive blood test when a cheap urine screen is available and more likely to get them a conviction for DUID?

These per se DUID “zero tolerance” laws are nothing but discrimination against cannabis users, plain and simple.  Metabolites for every other drug, legal and illegal, are eliminated from the body much quicker:

• PCP (“angel dust”) = up to 2 days detection.
• Cocaine (and “crack”) = up to 2-3 days detection.
• Opiates (heroin, oxycontin, etc.) = up to 1-2 days detection.
• Amphetamines (meth, speed) = up to 1-3 days detection.
• Barbiturates (Seconol, etc.) = up to 3 days detection.
• Benzodiazepenes (Xanax, Valium, Clonopin, etc.) = up to 2-3 days detection.
• Alcohol (Budweiser, Jim Beam, Reisling, etc.) = you can actually be considered unimpaired with current blood alcohol levels up to 0.08%, so long as you pass the roadside sobriety test!
• Cannabis (marijuana, hash, pot) = up to 7-100 days detection.

So you could smoke some dust, snort some coke, shoot some smack, and pop some pills at the party Friday night, and possibly be considered an unimpaired driver by Monday (you could even have a couple of drinks before you got pulled over), but if you smoked a joint last month, in eleven states you could be going to jail and losing your license for endangering the public on the roadways.

These “zero tolerance” laws are criminalizing an entire population – cannabis users – for molecules in their bodies that have nothing to do with impairment or driving ability.  Can you imagine the uproar if police harassed drivers based on the melanin content of their skin… whoops, never mind.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A former middle-school student who was strip-searched by school officials looking for ibuprofen pain medication won a partial victory of her Supreme Court appeal Thursday in a case testing the discretion of officials to ensure classroom safety.

Redding was an eighth-grade honor student in 2003, with no history of disciplinary problems at Safford Middle School, about 127 miles from Tucson, Arizona.

During an investigation into pills found at the school, a student told the vice principal that Redding had given her prescription-strength 400-milligram ibuprofen pills.

The school had a near-zero-tolerance policy for all prescription and over-the-counter medication, including the ibuprofen, without prior written permission.

Redding was pulled from class by Vice Principal Kerry Wilson, escorted to an office and confronted with the evidence. The girl denied the accusations.

A search of Redding’s backpack found nothing. A strip search was conducted by Wilson’s assistant and a school nurse, both females.

Redding was ordered to strip to her underwear and to pull on the elastic of the underwear, so any hidden pills might fall out, according to court records. No drugs were found.

“The strip search was the most humiliating experience I have ever had,” Redding said in an affidavit. “I held my head down so that they could not see that I was about to cry.”

The decision was 8-1.  Justice Clarence Thomas thought the Constitution doesn’t really cover the “preservation of order, discipline and safety in public schools”, so if you want to strip-search 13-year-old girls at school, the Founding Fathers would have been cool with that.  Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens thought the girl should be able to sue the school administrators who humiliated her, but the rest of the court decided that up til now it hasn’t been very clear how much protection the Constitution gives 13-year-old schoolgirls from strip searches, so the administrators couldn’t be reasonably expected to know they couldn’t just do that (if I’m reading SCOTUSblog’s analysis correctly).

So, from now on, there will be more protection for 13-year-old girls in school to not be expected to strip to their panties for school officials – not police, a freakin’ vice principal’s assistant and a school nurse! - when a teenage snitch lies about them holding drugs.  But all you 13-year-old girls who were strip-searched, you have no recourse.

I don’t suppose anybody ever considered just calling the girls’ parents.  ”Hello, Mrs. Redding? We have a tip your daughter may be holding prescription ibuprofen in violation of our zero-tolerance policy.  Can you come down to the school, please?”  No, wait, excuse me, I forgot, we’re talking about drugs; there’s no room for common sense here!  What am I thinking?  I just expected someone who takes seriously the phrase “zero tolerance” to show common sense.

Unbending Rules on Drugs in Schools Drive One Teen to the Breaking Point

Zero Tolerance isn’t a slogan, it’s a pledge to do whatever it takes to make you quit, jail you, or kill you. This time the penalties added up to an overwhelming burden for Josh Anderson, who had the unfortunate luck to be caught in possession twice in two years.

“I really have been working hard on this,” Josh wrote to the hearing officers. “I can’t believe I’m putting my parents through this now. I can’t believe how selfish and stupid I’ve been. . . . I’m honestly going to try my hardest to fix this.”

The Andersons were told that Josh would be barred from any regular Fairfax high school and might be tossed out of the system entirely. His parents were looking into private schools or moving. But there would be no hearing, no new school, no more visits from college football coaches asking about Josh’s talents. Without a word to his girlfriend, parents, psychologist, coach or teachers, Josh Anderson, 17, had killed himself.

He left a note, just two lines. “Why does it have to be like this?” And, to his girlfriend, “I love you.”

“No one can ever answer whether Fairfax County was responsible for what Josh did,” says Tim Anderson. “But they pushed him closer to the edge than he needed to be.” The parents know their son’s often-silent manner masked emotional troubles, but he had been in counseling, both through the school system and privately, and no one saw this coming. The trauma of facing expulsion, the Andersons believe, was just too much for their son.

In Fairfax, possession of marijuana on school grounds means automatic suspension and a recommendation of expulsion. “There’s no discretion at the school level,” says Paul Regnier, spokesman for the system. “Virginia law requires that if there’s possession of marijuana on school grounds, the student must be expelled unless there are special circumstances.”

Despite what you may think, Josh is a victim of the drug war. Zero Tolerance laws were envisioned as both a deterrent to use (with no effect) and a review-free way to remove meddlesome kids (works every time). Wonder why your local High School has a 40% dropout rate? These laws damage our society by under educating our soon to be fellow citizens. I recall being told once that future prison populations utilize high school drop out rates in their calculations. So with the expulsion, Virginia was planning the future for Josh and he decided that he wanted no part of it.

“Why does it have to be like this?”

I’m asking you for Josh, because he couldn’t make it here to ask you himself.