@catfish1957 AMEN,AMEN,AMEN!
Anyone caught driving while impaired needs to be hammered by the law. I am NOT saying "shot" or "sent to prison for life",but there should be consequences severe enough to give any sane person pause before hitting the road.
We ALL have the right to risk our own lives using any method we choose,but we do NOT have the right to risk the lives and health of others.
But that's the problem with pot.
You need an objective, verifiable, codifiable standard with repeatability in order to define (in a legal sense) what constitutes "impaired".
That's a lot harder to do than it has been with alcohol, and even in the case of alcohol, there have been problems with testing, methodology, and results of Blood Alcohol Content measurements, as well as those not taking in the variation in ability of some people to function with a BAC above legal limits. While set statistically based standards apply, those do not accurately encompass everyone.
Most of us have known people who are looped with just one or two drinks. OTOH, I knew a man who likely woke up with a BAC above .1 every day, and was finally pulled over with a BAC of .46. Not .046, but .46. He drank heavily, hard liquor, for decades, and worked as a mechanic. The police only stopped him because he was going down the shoulder of the road at 25 miles per hour, and not because he was doing that badly, and almost didn't test him but decided to because he smelled like booze, even though he wasn't having problems standing or talking.
In the spectrum of humans' ability to function with drugs, there is a broad range, so even with numerically established limits there are exceptions on both ends of that spectrum, those who can't function with small quantities in their system, and those who can function well far beyond the established limits.
The problems with pot remain:
There is no established limit.
There is no rapid test for the amount in a person's system.
Pot affects different people differently.
Different pot has different effects, due to the concentration of active ingredients.
There is no way to anticipate how much consumption will lead to what effect, without extensive experience by the user, whose judgement of their judgemental abilities may be impaired by the substance they are deciding has had what effect upon them. With the variation in concentrations, that is even more difficult.
All that leaves LEOs and the courts/legislatures with is the subjective standard of "he was messed up" or "I don't think he/she should have been driving", short of an accident, which is often taken as
prima facie evidence of impairment. Even in an accident, there is the question of whether or not that consumption contributed to the accident, something now done on a presumptive basis with alcohol. (If you're drunk, and get rear ended while sitting stopped at a red light, it's your fault because you were drunk.)
So pot opens a whole new kettle of worms, from testing to legislating to enforcement to the courts, not to mention legalizing impairment in the one place people are most likely to get busted, their vehicles (because otherwise, in the sanctity of their home, the police might never interact with them). Go a little fast, fail to signal, and any of a catalog of other minor traffic infractions, and you get to meet with LEOs.
If you can't show the skunk smell is coming from underneath instead of inside the vehicle, expect to have your ride searched.
And FWIW, I don't smoke anything any more, but never was much on weed.
