AAA’s Safety Foundation says it is now impossible to set a quantitative threshold for THC blood levels that can reliably identify a driver’s level of impairment.
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Research found deadly crashes linked to marijuana went from eight to 17 percent between 2013 and 2014.
The AAA definition of “recent” marijuana use included all drivers who tested positive for marijuana on blood tests, and AAA spokesman Matt Nasworthy said “they could have used marijuana the day prior, and still have it showing up in their system”.
The findings were published as part of an ongoing debate surrounding how marijuana can be monitored and controlled as more and more states legalize medical and/or recreational use.
Alarming new research shows the number of crashes involving marijuana have gone up significantly since becoming legal in Washington State.
“So, in our study, we looked at all five years of date, 2010 to 2014, and there were never 3,000 drivers involved in these fatal crashes during that time period”. Some drivers with relatively high levels of marijuana’s psychoactive compound THC were found to not be impaired at all, while drivers with comparably smaller levels may be more risky behind the wheel, especially if that person is not a regular user.
The foundation says the result is that drivers who are unsafe may be going free, while others may be wrongly convicted.
Marijuana can also affect people differently, making it challenging to develop consistent and fair guidelines.
The foundation’s recommendation to scrap the laws in Colorado, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington comes as legislatures in several more states consider adopting similar laws.
Colorado Department of Transportation official Robin Rocke, left, trains a state trooper in how to conduct field sobriety tests for marijuana intoxication.
The report notes that some states have implemented legal limits known as “per se limits” in an effort to fight drug-impaired drivers. However, a large number of drivers were not tested for THC or did not have available blood test results, so THC-related fatalities could be much higher, the report notes.
The AAA study out of Washington State, one of the first states to pass recreational marijuana use, found that testing drivers THC levels to determine who is safe and who isn’t – as many states have tried to use are flawed – potentially leading to unsafe drivers on the road. 08 blood alcohol limit for driving under the influence of alcohol. “It means that recent marijuana use is a growing contributing factor in traffic crashes that kill people”. “The other problem is that there is no scientific data that proves a specific level of THC indicates impairment”. The average time to collect blood from a suspected driver is often more than two hours because taking a blood sample typically requires a warrant and transport to a facility.
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Previous research on blood tests for drugged driving have arrived at the same conclusion, though well-known flaws with the tests have not stopped people from smearing the victims of police violence based on toxicology reports. In the 602 pot-smoking drivers, THC levels ranged from 1 to 47 nanograms per millilitre of blood. She was arrested and charged with driving while impaired.
