Do we all agree pot should be legal?

leaningright said:
Coke's illegal. Right now a positive test during an accident would lead to charges no matter how long it has been in the system.

We have enough inhibited drivers on the roads who kill many more people than Topper's dreaded guns do each year. With the legalization of MJ you will have that many more inhibited drivers as well. There needs to be a way to fairly test whether someone is under the influence, not just if it is in their system.
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I'm willing to allow the test or anything else to get it legal. I think it's total bullshit but it's not like the ghestapo rule we have today.
 
leaningright said:
Develop a test for determining if one is under the influence - yes.

No test - no.
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Why? DUIs are overblown for alcohol. MJ's effects on driving is very small. Driving while sleepy probably does far more damage.

If we are truly concerned with road safety we should go after the big fish (i.e., poorly designed/constructed/maintained roads) and quit worrying about the plankton of people driving on mj.
 
Prosecuting drugs under the influence is very difficult., Marijuana in a urine test will show THC which gets out of the system fairly quickly, so if you get THC you have a good chance at conviction. There is a matabilite for Marijuana that lasts possabily 30 days, if they only find this, you have a difficult time at getting a prosecution.
 
Marijuana shows up in the bloodstream 30 days later, but in low concentrations. Therefore, a zero tolerance policy on mj would be stupid, but we can set a concentration level to establish DUI laws.

http://www.mpp.org/library/marijuana-and-dui-laws-how.html

What is the threshold for considering a driver to be impaired by marijuana?

It is unclear what blood level of THC (the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana) constitutes actual impairment. Most credible scientists working on the issue acknowledge the difficulty of pegging THC impairment to a number (in a way similar to drunk driving laws), and epidemiological evidence on the risk of accidents associated with marijuana is much less conclusive than data regarding alcohol.

The most meaningful recent study measuring driver "culpability" (i.e., who is at fault) in 3,400 crashes over a 10–year period indicated that drivers with THC concentrations of less than five ng/mL in their blood have a crash risk no higher than that of drug–free users.[2] The crash risk begins to rise above the risk for sober drivers when a marijuana user's THC concentrations in whole blood reach five to 10 ng/mL.
 
I only say 21 because of the ghestapo like 21 for beer.

You can die for your country and vote at 18, but heaven forbid you have a beer.
 
Topspin said:
I only say 21 because of the ghestapo like 21 for beer.

You can die for your country and vote at 18, but heaven forbid you have a beer.
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I'm a tea-totaller (sp?) and have never tasted an alcoholic beverage in my life (unless you count Nyquil) but do not oppose or want to ban drinking. If you lower the age to 18, IMO, it must be under parental or at the very least, adult guidance. Most, not all but most 19 - 20 year olds aren't going to be responsible enough to drink "responsibily." The same thought process goes through my head for MJ.
 
leaningright said:
I'm a tea-totaller (sp?) and have never tasted an alcoholic beverage in my life (unless you count Nyquil) but do not oppose or want to ban drinking. If you lower the age to 18, IMO, it must be under parental or at the very least, adult guidance. Most, not all but most 19 - 20 year olds aren't going to be responsible enough to drink "responsibily." The same thought process goes through my head for MJ.
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Part of that mentality is because they're new to drinking. I started drinking very early, and by the time I was actually legal, it lost all it's appeal to go out and get blitzed nightly or weekly.
 
Chapdog said:
shouldnt the same apply to prescription pain killers? how about coke? other drugs?
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If it can be shown that a driver is under the influence of any of those, including a threshhold level of prescription drugs, then s/he will be charged with DUI. It's just that THC intoxication is difficult to determine because of the extremely long half-life of the metabolites. They stick around because they're highly lipophilic and not as readily excreted as some other substances. You won't still be under the influence one or two or three weeks out, but the metabolites will still be easily detectable in your bloodstream.
 
leaningright said:
They're illegal already. Prescription pain killers have restrictions on them in most states that make it illegal to operate machinery (includes cars) when taking them. I worked a wreck two years ago where the guy was under the influence of perscription drugs, legally administered, and he was cited and convicted of such.

My point is that MJ, if legalized, needs to be treated just like alcohol. People who use and drive under it's influence need to be punished. But it needs to be fair. The fact that THC stays in the system long after the effect is gone makes a "test" for influence very difficult.
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Wish I had waited to read your post before writing my longwinded reply!
 
What should be and and what can get done is two diff things.

I burned a lot of tree at 15 onward, but the best we can hope for is equal treatment with beer. I bartended at 17, I can tell you no switch goes off at 21 that makes you drink responsbly
 
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