We Aren't Ready for the Future of Impaired Driving. #opinion
Let me start this rant by saying that I am proud to live in a country with a government that is fair, just, and democratic. By and large, I do not have to worry about corruption, human rights violations, or an absence of the rule of law. Is my government perfect?
Let me start this rant by saying that I am proud to live in a country with a government that is fair, just, and democratic. By and large, I do not have to worry about corruption, human rights violations, or an absence of the rule of law. Is my government perfect? Absolutely not, but it does its job reasonably well for the most part.
And, yet, the justice system failed a 70-year old car enthusiast from my community.
The story starts Wednesday morning in court. A 17-year old boy went to court to answer to a series of charges. According to his mother and step-father, he was so high that he was slurring, slobbering and swearing throughout the court appearance. For the sake of being topical, I am going to assume that the teenager was high on marijuana, but that is purely speculation at this point. Now, I’m not a legal expert by any means, but I am pretty certain that showing up to court high is a pretty good reason to find a defendant in contempt of court.
Apparently, the judge didn’t. He released the teenager despite pleas from his family to do something to get their son off of the streets in his condition. Now, I get it. Contempt is a very discretional charge, and there has to be some pretty significant evidence in order to jail someone for it. In this situation, I get that the judge is running the risk of violating that teen’s civil liberties by throwing him in jail for being high on something. The other side of the story has yet to be told, and a lot of assumptions are being made, but the end result is a real wake-up call to any countries looking at the possibility of legalizing cannabis.
The same 17-year old who, impaired as he was, was released from court, later crashed his girlfriend’s car into a telehandler (the same thing that Jules Bianchi crashed into), and careened across the centre median directly into the path of a Volkswagen Type 1 driven by a 70-year old man, who died at the scene. The impact was so violent that debris was scattered all the way across the freeway (motorway), which caused the road to be shut down for several hours. The 17-year old survived and was charged with, among other things, dangerous driving causing death.
Although it’s merely speculated at this point that the teenager was under the influence of drugs in court and at the time of the crash, let’s just assume that he was. Like I said before, that seems to be, in my mind, reasonable grounds to be found in contempt of court. The judge should have remanded the teenager; and, by his failure to do so, the judge is an accessory (to some extent) in the death of the Volkswagen driver.
But maybe the judge didn’t have much other choice.
You see, field testing for marijuana and/or other cannabis products is controversial. Field testing kits are notorious for generating false positives, so I would find it hard to believe that they would be used as an evidenciary benchmark. In addition, it’s highly possible to test positive long after the effects of marijuana have worn off. But the most worrying evidence comes from a study done by the AAA, which claims that there is no scientific way to determine if a driver is stoned.
In the case of drunk driving, police have a reasonably accurate, minimally-invasive, easy-to-administer roadside test for intoxication: a breathalyzer. This means that, if you get pulled over while driving drunk, you will be caught and there will be evidence against you. Now, you would think that drunk driving would be a thing of the past in light of this invention. You would think that the massive barrage of emotionally-charged PSAs and criminal penalties would make drunk driving a thing of the past. You would think that drunk driving would become so socially unacceptable that people would be conditioned to avoid it.
In my home province of Saskatchewan, however, drinking and driving is still a huge problem. The deputy premier of our province, Don McMorris, recently pleaded guilty to DUI of alcohol. Imagine that: if a high-ranking member of our legislature is not immune to doing something so blatantly stupid and irresponsible, then what is stopping the blue-collar average Joe from doing the same? Are we that devoid of conscience?
Apparently, we are. The AAA study mentioned earlier found that the rate of fatal crashes involving drivers who recently used cannabis doubled in Washington after they legalized marijuana. Remember, we don’t even have a scientific way to prove if someone is stoned, so the risk of getting caught and convicted of stoned driving seems to be a lot lower. Yet, knowing that he would fail a fairly accurate alcohol sobriety test, and realizing that his political career would be ruined if he got caught, even Don McMorris decided that the risk was worth it.
This highlights a major issue in the debate on legalization of cannabis. Any DUI lawyer would easily be able to argue reasonable doubt for clients on trial for driving while stoned. And this has me worried. What’s to stop someone who just did some fat dabs from driving, knowing that he is unlikely to be punished? You could open up a whole Pandora’s box at the expense of public safety.
At the end of the day, if we are going to legalize marijuana, we need to be able to have some sort of effective punishment to keep people who are too stoned to drive off of the roads. Failing that, and the 70-year old Volkswagen enthusiast will be far from the last person to pay for that with his life.
Comments
I’m not one for smoking anything, but I’m not against the idea of feeling a high. However, it shouldn’t take a brain dead monkey to know that anything, whether it be alcohol, marijuana, pills, etc., that affects your brain and/or vision is a bad idea before placing yourself behind the wheel. The sad truth though is that it doesn’t even have to be something classified as a “bad drug” or “intoxicator” to make for an unsafe driver. I took a combination of Delsym, DayQuil, and some other over the counter allergy medicine when I was really sick once, and, unbeknownst to me beforehand, I drove right around the corner to the store and was unable to look anywhere but straight ahead because of how loopy everything went when I looked down at my speedometer. There’s probably never going to be a true way to stop impaired drivers, and that’s a truly terrifying thought.
Yeah, I am with you on this. Trouble is, some people cannot make the right decisions themselves
Any form of distracted driving should result in jail time. Bam! Problem solved
Not to be a stickler, but breathalyzers are not 100% accurate, so you can legally opt to be taken to the station to be given a more accurate breath test, blood test, or urine test, but those three all have error involved, especially if you have a health issue which interfears with the results of the Urine or Blood test. If you pass field sobriety test, no breathelyzer should be used right?
Oh yeah field testing isn’t 100% but it is way worse for marijuana, to the point where pressing charges is essentially impossible
I’m Alejandro, and I DO approve this message.
Marijuana is something I support but do not take part in myself
I live in California where medical marijuana is legal and it is soo easy to get your hands on
It doesn’t matter if you have a card or not
They are sold on street corners
In saying this I have seen soo many drivers with either a pipe or joint in their hand
And I think this should be considered just as highly and dangerous, if not more, as drunk driving
It is wrong and is idiotic to do such a thing
Keep everyone on the streets safe
I agree completely. While I do not get stoned and dislike the smell of weed, I can see that the idea of legalizing it has quite a few merits. Yet, the primary concerns are:
1) Preventing the operation of cars under influence.
2) Keeping it out of the hands of children.
and
3) The long and short term effects on the users’ health.
Despite disagreeing with many of their choices and policies I have been warming up to the Trudeau administration, and the way they handle their near promise to legalize marijuana will likely have a major effect on whether I and other Canadians will come to regret trading in the albeit not perfect, but very functional Harper government for the Liberals.
Interesting. I really hope they don’t legalize weed. I smoked it myself for years and it’s not something I’m proud of but I mention it because I know stoners. I know stoners like the back of my hand. Stoners basically live their entire lives high. They drive high on a daily basis. This is in part due to the fact they know it’s basically unpoliceable. I’ve been in cars where everyone’s smoking it up which have been pulled over by the police. They weed is confiscated and that’s been it. Once my buddy was arrested because he had 3 different kinds of weed in different bags so he could be done for dealing but that’s been it. The main problem is the pothead mentality. They’re in complete denial about the dangers and effects of the drug and believe they’re perfectly capable of operating a vehicle. If you bring up the subject around them you’ll recieve a tirade of nonsense and bull s**t about how theres nothing wrong with it, how there couldn’t possibly be any danger to your health from smoking weed and how somehow smoking weed magically makes you a safer driver. When I was a stoner I might have said something similar. If I could go back in time to give myself a good hard slap I would. Keep it off the shelves.
I come from the land of plenty in terms of marijuana use of course, but the issue you’re addressing here isn’t a widespread problem in The Netherlands.
There are very rarely cases of people driving while impaired and causing damage to others. Sure, there are always some bad apples, but Pandora’s box is basically empty around here.
In my country smoking pot is treated as a recreational social activity because it has been legal for so long. It’s really no big deal. So people do it at home or with friends, there is no real need to drive. And when we do, we use a bicycle, which is a damn side less dangerous.
I guess Canada’s geography makes driving a much bigger factor in the social life, especially in rural areas. Quite common to go to one party out of town and then drive an hour to go to another one that same night. That’s pretty much where the drinking and driving culture here takes root, but it spreads to the cities pretty quick too.
Well it’s funny that it gets talked about like that, separately from other legal drugs. Why does it get noticed that much more when alcohol is the worst and it’s been here for years - where even more people died and will continue dieing. Just like with alcohol, you do it on own responsibility if you are going to drive and we can’t do anything about it unless we ban driving, then everyone can walk drunk and high. Alcohol could be banned completely, but it can’t because well, no money and people wouldn’t die which government don’t like. That would be only ways to stop getting behind wheel drunk or high. What’s point of giving high fines and jail while you’ve already killed someone - that doesn’t change anything other than there’s one more person in jail. That crash has nothing to do with legalization and with Marijuana benefits it should be and keep being legal. The only problem is people, and if they are stupid enough to go drive high. In other side, if anything crashed into her she would most likely die, that car didn’t even have airbags (not sure about that), but would you notice it if he was drunk instead high? Why do you notice when something bad happens with legalization of something finally good for human, and not worry about something that’s worst drug, that has killed million of people and will continue and is still legal? I hope you get what I was trying to point out, maybe i ran away from point of your topic but I hope you get it.
Poor guy :(