Full hearings needed on marijuana driving-under-the-influence bill
A Greater Cleveland legislator’s bill would give people arrested for driving or boating under the influence of marijuana a chance to produce evidence they weren’t impaired.
That’s important because traces of marijuana can stay in the system for weeks, unlike alcohol, which typically lasts hours or days.
Senate Bill 26 would also set a testing threshold for THC -- tetrahydrocannabinol, the main psychoactive component of cannabis -- from which a jury could infer impairment, absent proof sufficiently persuasive from the defendant that he or she was driving sober. The bill threads the needle a bit here, since there is no scientifically accepted blood concentration for marijuana that can show impairment.
Prosecutors worry SB 26 would make marijuana impairment difficult, time-consuming and costly to prove, but the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Nathan Manning, a North Ridgeville Republican, lawyer and former city prosecutor, sees SB 26 as a matter of fairness.
With marijuana now legally prescribed in Ohio for medical conditions -- and with the possibility that voters will legalize it for recreational use -- Manning wants to ensure that those arrested for operating a motor vehicle or boat under the influence of marijuana are afforded full due process.
His bill, introduced last month, is similar to last session’s Senate Bill 203, which failed to pass.
SB 203, for which there were only two hearings, was supported by lawyers from the Office of Ohio Public Defender, the Ohio State Bar Association, the DUI Defense Lawyers Association and the Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
SB 26 needs a full complement of hearings to examine not just current knowledge of what constitutes marijuana impairment, but also whether testing can show clearer evidence of impairment and, alternatively, whether the scientific uncertainties are just too great to get to the bottom of who’s impaired, and who isn’t.
The scientific gray areas also make it difficult to assess how big a problem marijuana impairment on the roads might be.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) notes, “It’s hard to measure how many crashes are caused by drugged driving. This is because:
- a good roadside test for drug levels in the body doesn’t yet exist
- some drugs [like marijuana] can stay in your system for days or weeks after use, making it difficult to determine when the drug was used, and therefore, how and if it impaired driving.”
Yet marijuana’s effects are not inconsequential.
NIDA reports that, “Marijuana may impair judgment, motor coordination, and reaction time, and studies have found a direct relationship between blood THC concentration and impaired driving ability. Marijuana is the illicit drug most frequently found in the blood of drivers who have been involved in vehicle crashes, including fatal ones.”
