Quote Originally Posted by 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.

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?