And here it is...HB11-1261 - the THC Level DUI Bill

[porone]

Shrug

[senorx12562]

Dude, smoking pot is not a civil liberty. It isn't capital-F Freedom. It's a liberty, to be sure, but a political liberty - the same as voting or buying booze or driving a car. So.... it's not really about freedom; it's about cannabis. There are ways this law could be drafted that are consistent with our constitutional and human rights and there are variants that would lead to great violations of our civil liberties.

Sorry, but anytime one is threatened with incarceration, it IS capital F Freedom.

[HighPopalorum]

Who is being threatened with incarceration besides people who have already broken our existing laws? Per se laws don't threaten a new class of people, but only make it easier to prosecute people who have already committed DUID according to our law. The devil's in the details with this law - if it gives police the right to stop and demand blood from anyone they wish on the flimsiest pretext, it's bad. If it allows police and prosecutors another evidential tool with which to convict high drivers, it's good. How about this: only allow police to test people already charged and jailed for other traffic crimes? There's a lot of restrictions we can place on law enforcement's ability to use this, and we should. I don't mean to straw man you, but I gather your objections to per se laws are part of the broader libertarian objection to DUI laws and I think they are somewhat out of the scope of the conversation - we're never going to agree on DUI laws if you believe people should be able to drive as high or drunk as they please so long as they don't show impairment or damage property.

[TheReleafCenter]

If anyone was at the Judiciary meeting, was there any discussion of making driving high a DWAI and not a DUID? That would mean first-offenders with clean driving records would not lose their license automatically, and if no one was hurt there would be no felony.

ACT4CO proposed an amended version that would have set 5ng as the DWAI limit and 8ng for DUID, no per se DUI's and a 2 year sunset. I thought it was reasonable.

The thing that Rep Ryder kept mentioning that hit home with me is that NO ONE is properly educating patients about driving under the influence of D9 THC. Sure, a lot of places include a sentence in their paperwork that says not to operate heavy machinery, but that seems woefully insufficient.

EDIT: I also would say that the per se element of the bill was incorrectly worded and this came up at the hearing. Levy wants it to be like per se DUI, but there was strong opposition in committee to that. I don't see that making the final bill. This is a fluid process.

Law enforcement testified that simply being high wasn't enough to do a blood draw. The DUID would never hold up in court, so they'd be wasting everyones time. You need to show the same signs you would in a DUI case. They also testified that a vast majority of DUID's are in the 14-17ng level, so you essentially have to be VERY HIGH before they're going to bother.

[HighPopalorum]

A sunset provision is a good addition I hadn't thought of. The whole idea is kind of experimental.

[TheReleafCenter]

A sunset provision is a good addition I hadn't thought of. The whole idea is kind of experimental.

Exactly. The hope is that there is more evidence soon.

[canaguy27]

so you essentially have to be VERY HIGH before they're going to bother.

Or if they feel like harassing you...

[senorx12562]

Who is being threatened with incarceration besides people who have already broken our existing laws? Per se laws don't threaten a new class of people, but only make it easier to prosecute people who have already committed DUID according to our law. The devil's in the details with this law - if it gives police the right to stop and demand blood from anyone they wish on the flimsiest pretext, it's bad. If it allows police and prosecutors another evidential tool with which to convict high drivers, it's good. How about this: only allow police to test people already charged and jailed for other traffic crimes? There's a lot of restrictions we can place on law enforcement's ability to use this, and we should. I don't mean to straw man you, but I gather your objections to per se laws are part of the broader libertarian objection to DUI laws and I think they are somewhat out of the scope of the conversation - we're never going to agree on DUI laws if you believe people should be able to drive as high or drunk as they please so long as they don't show impairment or damage property.

I do actually believe that driving under the influence is properly a criminal offense, but I'm not persuaded that the instant proposal is supported by any showing that it makes any of us safer. I don't believe the science is clear on whether a particular concentration of thc in the blood is indicative of a particular level of impairment, nor have I seen anything that would allow the average person to conform their behavior to the requirements of the law, short of, as you suggested earlier, not driving at all within 2-3 hours of smoking, although consuming edibles is more problematic. The proposal seems to attempt to treat mj like alcohol, and I think that the actions of the two drugs are sufficiently different that to treat them the same way is a mistake. Maybe someday there will be some kind of test that can reliably gauge how impaired a particular person is, but until that time, I'm not in favor of conditioning one's freedom upon the results of a test that may or may not reliably tell whether that person broke the law or not by driving while impaired.

As for my well-known libertarian leanings, they do require me to evaluate any legislative proposal based on at least two criteria: Is the goal one that is properly pursued by the government; and , if so, is the proposal going to be effective at attaining that goal? (There are others, such as some kind of cost-benefit analysis, but if it doesn't pass the first two, they don't matter.) This clearly passes the first and fails the second. If there is no way for the average person to conform their behavior to the requirements of the law, it will not deter the behavior. The amount of alcohol one can consume without running afoul of the law is reasonably well known and available info, but with mj, not so much. I just don't think, as proposed, it will deter much impaired driving. I'm also curious, and maybe someone can explain, what is wrong with the current DUID law that it needs to be modified specifically for mj?

[TheReleafCenter]

I think the argument is current DUID laws don't give much guidance to a jury. By setting a permissible amount for a driver, your lawyer can tell a jury that while you may have been under the influence of marijuana, you tested at only 1ng, well under the 5ng limit. In the status quo, if you're high... you're high.

Once again, I want to let everyone know that ACT4CO is trying to do the actual research on ng levels in Colorado. Lot's of people volunteered at the hearing, don't know if they touched base with ACT4 though.

[porone]

Why dont we make a law against redundant laws.

The laws we have work just fine.

Making a new law will not make anyone safer.