LTE: Driving while stoned

RoguePoet

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Letter to the Editor March 27 Hawaii Tribune Herald



Driving while stoned

"Stoned driving draws concern" (Tribune-Herald, March 19) is of great interest, particularly to Hawaii's cannabis patients. The article mentions a suburban Denver woman who suffers from multiple sclerosis. She needs cannabis to ease tremors which require that her body be completely saturated with THC.

Wisely, she does not smoke and drive, but a new saliva test pushed by police to determine impairment would always test her positive for being stoned.

Since measuring in this way is inaccurate in determining a driver's level of impairment, it is another way of placing the patient and all in harm's way of the law.

This is another erosion of our privacy rights. Patients should not, of course, drive stoned because of the common sense of not adding possible additional risks to an already dangerous activity. But this is not so because it is based on statistical evidence or crash history.

In fact, evidence to date in crash culpability studies has failed to demonstrate a significant difference between drivers with THC in their blood and drug-free drivers as contributors to accidents and highway deaths.

Driving impaired while under the influence of alcohol, "ice" and prescription drugs, on the other hand, is the largest contributor to accidents and deaths in this country and in this county.

We have all experienced the weaving drunk or the bat-out-of-hell meth driver. On the other hand, you may never notice the cautious and courteous driver lightly dosed on cannabis on the road.

This is, of course, not 100 percent always the case, but for a former drug czar to say that there is "terrible carnage ... on the roads caused by marijuana" is extremely untrue and inaccurate and has no facts to back it up.

Google "driving stoned" (not while driving). Get the facts, and demand the truth be told.

Andrea Tischler

Hilo

Your Views for March 27 | Hawaii Tribune Herald
 
I was under the impression that a saliva test only shows recent cannabis use (such as from smoking and possibly vaporizing). IOW, that it doesn't show the indicators of THC that are being released from consumers' fat cells the way a urine test does, but instead simply shows the presence of... "smoking residue" that is left behind in the users' mouths. And that it only showed recent use; that the usual thorough brushing of teeth and rinsing with a good mouthwash that we should all do multiple times per day anyway as part of our daily hygiene routine would remove that residue.

If that is the case, I'd think it would be a much better test than a urine test - which shows consumption over a much longer period, and is prejudiced against cannabis users (compared to other drugs that are tested for) because those other drugs typically only show up for ~72 hours or so.

Am I correct in my assumptions about saliva tests? Or am I way off the mark?

Which doesn't address the specific question of whether a person that is legally consuming cannabis for medicinal reasons should be treated any differently (read: worse) than someone who is legally consuming, say, vicodin for medicinal reasons. That is to say, that IMHO neither person should be tested in the first place unless there is already reason to suspect impairment. Which is unlikely to be the case for the medicinal cannabis user unless he/she has just began to consume it for the first time in their life... But I am willing to concede that it can happen just like with many other substances and therefore the issue shouldn't be completely ignored.

Driving impaired/distracted is something that shouldn't happen, regardless of the reasons. Again, I feel that it is less likely to happen than with alcohol (recreational) or prescribed medications (medicinal). But it's a possibility, no matter how unlikely. Instead of assuming that everyone who consumes cannabis (for whatever reason) is automatically guilty of it and trying to "prove" it, they should attempt to understand the thing so that they can help educate drivers about the possibility (and relative likelihood) of it happening in the first place. LEO's duties are twofold; they are tasked to enforce the laws, yes, but they are also supposed to help ensure the safety of people in their jurisdictional areas. But this requires both a degree of education and compassion/understanding which, sadly, many LEO lack. (Not all of them do. I've met - and been helped out a time or two - some that were actually good LEOs (IMHO) but decent human beings.)

Along with the responsibility to help keep people safe... I would suggest that if a person is stopped who does turn out to be impaired due to their legal consumption of (medicinal-use) cannabis, instead of arresting the person, you should make them aware of the problem and help them manage it. <SHRUGS> I'd feel the same way about the person I mentioned who was prescribed vicodin as well. However, I wouldn't generally advertise that I was doing so out of fear that people would take it to mean (in practice even though not in intent) that they could dose up as much as they wanted and be safe against arrest because LEO would just give them an "educational lecture" and let them go, lol. And, of course, if their impaired driving caused an accident, property damage, personal injury (or worse), well... We are all, when it is said and done, responsible for our actions, so the fact that a person didn't know that they were not in a fit state to drive at that time is no excuse (and in the case of a fatality, would - at best - turn a vehicular manslaughter/homicide into a charge of involuntarily manslaughter. IMHO, of course). But other than that... I'd much rather see someone get set straight about whether or not they should have had that extra bag from the volcano that the doctor recommended as part of their treatment/wellness plan than the same police officer give a simple warning to the guy that drank nine martinis during his lunch.

BtW, I have known people with MS and with epilepsy. It seems quite obvious to this old Tortured Soul that I'm safer sharing the roads with them if they have consumed cannabis recently than if they have not.
 
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