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Comment by chadash | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the negativity in many of the comments here. I'm all for legalization of marijuana, but I actually think that the inability to test for people driving high is a very reasonable argument against legalization. I generally feel that people should be able to make their own choices, but not if those choices involve driving a 3000 pound piece of metal down the highway while impaired.

Yes, we need to be certain that this isn't giving false positives. But if anything, this is step towards more legalization efforts on the whole (and fewer people driving high).

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I get that breathalyzers give you a nice simple, relatively objective number to point at, but shouldn't we be testing for actual impairment rather than the presence of chemicals which may or may not be an indicator of impairment?

Yes, in an ideal world we would do that. But by the time we come up with a perfect test that can be done roadside by police to determine driving impairment, that has very few false positives and holds up in court, we'll most likely have self driving cars and this won't be an issue anyway.

I understand that everyone reacts differently to different drugs. Dale Earnhardt can probably be a little tipsy and still drive better than me. But even if you are an above average driver, it's still immoral (and I think should be illegal) to use substances that will increase your risk of killing someone else in a car accident, even if you are having a small amount of those substances that just brings you down to average driver levels.

Car accidents are one of the leading causes of death. It's an inherently risky activity to be doing every day. But we've structured our society in a way that makes it unavoidable. Given that it's dangerous even for sober people, I don't think we should be giving people the right to drive under circumstances that make it even more dangerous.

Lots of behaviors impair your driving ability. A study found that being dehydrated caused the same number of driving errors as being drunk [0]. I'm sure it would be easy to make a field sobriety test for blood water content, but they don't, because safety isn't the real reason these laws get made. It's just public pressure to enforce moral values.

[0]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11547199/Not-dr...

>Lots of behaviors impair your driving ability. A study found that being dehydrated caused the same number of driving errors as being drunk [0].

On June 12th Colorado alone surpassed 1 billion dollars in legal marijuana sales [1]

Let's be overly optimistic and assume an average customer in Colorado has spent $5,000 that means you have 200,000 customers. That's 200,000 people potentially driving while high.

How many people, of legal driving age, are dehydrated to the point of intoxication in/visiting Colorado during that time period? I'm guessing less than a thousand, probably less than 100.

[1](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/colorado-cannabis-sales-hit-...)

The article you cite says:

> "To put our results into perspective, the levels of driver errors we found are of a similar magnitude to those found in people with a blood alcohol content of 0.08%"

This is just comparing against the lower limit of what we legally allow. Clearly, many drunk drivers are far drunker than this.

But in any case, I don't think it's "just public pressure to enforce moral values". You can't legally drive on Ambien, but this is a prescribed drug that I don't think people have a moral issue with.

While I think the dehydration example above is probably a stretch since it's not really as bad as alcohol, there are other things that are. I'm pretty sure driving with lack of sleep is pretty bad. But it's just not practical to test for it as far as I know.

> safety isn't the real reason these laws get made. It's just public pressure to enforce moral values

Oh please. Alcohol accounts for 30ish percent of driving fatalities. Even if dehydration is equally dangerous (a big if) it’s still far less prevalent. Maybe that’s the reason there’s no law about it.

There are other things that lead to driving accidents, like lack of sleep or perhaps even needing to use the restroom. Ideally, a field test would cover most of these.

Someone just over the legal alcohol limit could be less impaired than a drowsy, sober driver, but the former would be more likely to be blamed for an accident than the latter, especially in areas with really low limits (e.g. it's 0.05% here in Utah).

That study [0] had so many flaws it's not even funny.

1. It only had 12 participants 2. One of those participants was excluded from the final results 3. They didn't test the participants' (or a separate group's) driving ability while under the influence of alcohol (they used a simulator, so it would have been fine), and so you really can't use the results to make any comparisons between dehydration and alcohol use 4. The study was funded by the European Hydration Institute

[0]: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/bitstream/2134/20400...

I kind of love that biased test results funded by Big Water are a thing.

Oh trust me, "Big Water" is very much a thing. I've met a guy who runs a coke bottling plant; he could hardly believe his luck. They literally just run the existing stuff dry, and it's got massive margins.

What are the chances that as you mention Dale, and I Google to find out who he is, that he would have hit the news having just survived a plane crash hours ago.

The officer should still have discretion here to let someone go if they don't feel the person is impaired. But giving them a number means they can't use that discretion the opposite way, e.g. arresting someone because "they seem like they're driving high". I imagine that kind of discretion would disproportionately affect minorities, so I see this as a win.

"You breathalyzed positive, but you don't seem too messed up to drive to me. Drive safe."

Said no officer ever

> The officer should still have discretion here to let someone go if they don't feel the person is impaired. But giving them a number means they can't use that discretion the opposite way, e.g. arresting someone because "they seem like they're driving high". I imagine that kind of discretion would disproportionately affect minorities, so I see this as a win.

I can't imagine a situation where an officer would employ the use of a breathalyzer and we worry about discretion. The officer used their discretion to pull the motorist over. They used their discretion to perform a sobriety test. They used their discretion to employ a breathalyzer.

Point is, if the cop wanted to let you off there are numerous occasions to do so.

I'm sure this varies by jurisdiction, but I really wish my local police department (in Waterloo region) were willing to put even the slightest effort toward general road safety. As a four season bike/eskate commuter who wears a gopro, I am yelled at, swerved at, I witness drivers running stop signs, exiting driveways without looking where they're going, making RTOR without looking where they are going, driving at people walking in crosswalks, and using their phones at stoplights.

I have recorded lots of videos of these behaviours, many with plate and driver face clearly visible, and my local police service just has zero interest in following up on it. There are hotspot intersections I've informed them about where they could set up shop and nail 10-20 drivers an hour for convictions with tickets ranging from $200 to $1000, but I guess they're too busy idling in parking lots waiting for that high priority call to come in.

So, driving high is totally a problem and going to be increasingly a problem, especially in Canada. But based on what I see in my community, it's not clear that the police have any interest at all in proactive enforcement, especially in service of road safety.

This isn't a silver bullet, but it will probably help. Say you are driving high right now. A cop pulls you over and suspects you are high. Now, he's got to get a blood test, which he needs to take you to a lab for and will probably need a warrant, because who is gonna consent to having their blood drawn. And most of the time, the blood test doesn't show anything useful, because unless it's done within a short time frame of you using cannabis, the THC will be broken down and it won't show that you smoked within the last few hours, only that you smoked recently, as in the last few days or weeks. So what kind of cop wants to deal with this? If you had an accurate test that could be done on the spot, it would be much easier for them. It's not like every cop will instantly be motivated, but I'm sure it'll help.

Glad to see someone else from Waterloo in the comments! I'm not sure that what local police department serves your area, but the Waterloo Regional Police Service are actually really ahead of the curve when it comes to drug impaired driving. They have more drug recognition experts per capital than almost any other jurisdiction in Canada and if I am remembering correctly they are making it mandatory to train new recruits in the standard field sobriety tests.

They should still be listening to your complaints, however. Hope you have better luck in the future.

Yes, it's WRPS for me. To be honest, I've kind of given up hope. Until the current chief is replaced there's just not much point advocating for anything.

Where is the correlation between these events and driving high being "totally a problem"

The correlation is that it's not clear that lack of a roadside cannibis test is the most pressing issue preventing cops from making our roads safer. There are dozens of things that could be better enforced (especially with more commitment to automation), but even "progressive" police departments consistently choose not to pursue most of them.

Apart from the difficulty of testing, I think the lack of simple guidelines like ‘one drink per hour’ makes it hard for cannabis users to guage their level of intoxication. I’m not sure whether it’s biologically practical, but it would be a big improvement if people generally had a reasonably easy and consistent way to determine how long they should wait as a function of how much they’ve consumed, the delivery method, their weight, their tolerance etc.

Right now it’s just completely subjective and that makes it easy for someone to justify DUI when they would never do so if similarly impaired by alcohol.

We need research and education as much as (and probably more than) enforcement.

The founder claims above that you can't detect it after 3-4 hours. Yes, there are people who will take a puff and be fine to drive an hour later. But there are plenty who won't be. As a general rule, making cannabis legal with the caveat that you can't drive within a minimum of 3-4 hours of using it, even if you feel fine to drive, seems reasonable (obviously, if you still feel impaired, it should be illegal to drive, whether it's detectable or not).

It does sound reasonable as a conservative default, but the same could be said about driving after two or three drinks—while it certainly doesn’t make anyone a better driver, good laws often try to strike a balance between public safety and not over-criminalizing extremely common and relatively low risk behavior.

Edit: What do you think would happen if we made a strict law that anything more than 0.0% BAC = a DWI? My guess is you’d end up with a lot fewer slightly intoxicated drivers, and a lot more extremely intoxicated drivers, because people will figure they might as well just drink as much as they want if they’re already breaking the law anyway.

Legalization is probably more likely to bring about good testing, with a bit of lag time, and hopefully lead to fewer people driving while high, which some people will do even when it's not legal.

Also, FWIW, if it's legal, in some places you can even order it for delivery ( http://dutchie.com ) which certainly beats being out on the road.

The first question I have is whether driving high on cannabis is less safe than sober. Then there is a question of levels of impairment. I wouldn't be surprised that someone lightly stoned is actually safer than sober due to being more patient with performance degrading the more stoned they are. Treating cannabis like alcohol is not the correct approach. I sold find it better to think of it like coffee. Some coffee before driving is fine but large jitter inducing amounts is not.

The human race is a bunch of bumbling morons half of which are also bad people.

For any new human endeavor which could negatively impact my life in any way I start with the assumption that whatever measure is undertaken will do nothing to address the actual problem AND whatever can possibly go wrong will.

From there I'm willing from there to be convinced that the people are uncommonly capable and ethical in theory.

> but not if those choices involve driving a 3000 pound piece of metal down the highway while impaired

Loads of people make the choice every day to drive while distracted, texting while driving, etc. I see that as a far greater threat that needs to be addressed, and none of those things can be "tested" for when you get pulled over.

It's not either/or. We can push for testing for high drivers and push for ways to combat and penalize distracted driving. The fact that high driving apparently can be tested for while distracted driving can't makes this a low-hanging fruit.

I'm not sure I understand your point. There are lots of things that impair driving that can't be tested and are therefore hard to address. Some of them are really bad. Therefore, we should not focus on things that impair driving that can be tested?

Because alcohol has been around for a long time in the public’s consciousness, they equate marijuana with alcohol in terms of impairment and driving. They are not comparable. Test impairment, not the presence of an arbitrary chemical in one’s breath.

Well, this simply doesn't matter. There are already tests for impairment that failing will land you a DUI regardless of your breathalyzer test levels.

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