Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant that that, in high doses, causes an extreme degredation to motor skills, coordination, and thought patterns and can cause a loss of conciousness.
I agree there should be safety regulations in regards to weed but, breathalyzers and typical drug and alcohol tests are not an effective way to gauge the level of cannabis intoxication for an indiviual.
If this was really about reducing risk on the road, we should somehow incentivize people like OP to work on the self-driving car problem, rather than come up with a device to catch stoned drivers. Think how much brain power and law enforcement time is going to be taken up dealing with stoned drivers. The rational thing to do would be to let people drive stoned, arrest those who are visibly impaired and can't perform a field sobriety test, and focus our efforts on getting AI to replace all human drivers.
In general my opinion is that .08 BAC sounds reasonable and an equivalent of MJ "could" be also. But most cases that would be a huge amount of MJ, and still doesn't relate to the effects noticed at high consumption of alcohol. IE I have never seen someone smoke so much they black out and cannot control themselves. Whereas that's happening every night people go out drinking.
My view is that there is no good way to measure this universally among all people, and MJ "impaired" driving is a non-issue compared with Drunk Driving.
Should we test people for driving on caffeiene? What about after eating too much and being sleepy? These are effects on par and just judgement calls people need to make. If the officer can smell weed\finds it then that seems appropriate and enough.
EDIT: To the points below about people passing out or cops calling 911 on themselves that speaks to the incredible variety of experience people have and what someone might experience their first time with edibles. It's not comparable to the effects smoking has on regular users, and not something anyone should be doing while driving, but how do you test for that with a Breathalyzer?
Fair points but I think this testing is only about smoking? That would seem to give even less reason to support this kind of testing since it misses the most egregious cases of edibles. I think anyone would agree that people in that kind of state are in no condition to drive, but again in my experience way outside of normal usage and not something I have ever seen. If the test took that into account alright, but it seems like these breathalyzer would be detecting a far lower threshold
Double Edit: "Theyre working on it" when it comes to edibles....
It definitely is not anywhere near as bad as other drugs impairment wise, but it definitely can be quite dangerous to drive on.
And yes, being sleepy while driving is also super dangerous.
Every now and then you also hear that a law enforcement officer got high and called 911 panicking, googling "cop calls 911 high" brings up a couple of Canadian officers and a Michigan officer on the first page.
facepalm
If you can let that sort of judgement slip, you think there aren't people out there getting baked and going for a drive, or now that you can easily vape away just driving down the street vaping?
A friend recently passed away and after the funeral a bunch of us went back to the house they grew up in to just hang out and talk about old times. Just about everyone there was getting extremely high, forgetting what they were saying mid sentence, taking the better part of a half hour to scratch off a single scratch off ticket, having the goofy slouch where your head goes way out in front of you... and then leaving, in their vehicles still quite high.
I mean, if you can't have a conversation without completely forgetting what you were saying in the middle of a word... you can't tell me that isn't going to affect your driving. You might just sit at a stop sign for 5 minutes because you forgot it was your turn to go, but you also might be like "hey I'm gonna check Facebook" while you're driving down the interstate.
If I had to choose, I'd rather be on the road with drunk drivers than high drivers. People that are drunk often have slowed reaction time, people that are high can easily entirely forget what they are doing and start doing something else.
To the points about people passing out or cops calling 911 on themselves that speaks to the incredible variety of experience people have and what someone might experience their first time with edibles. It's not comparable to the effects smoking has on regular users, and not something anyone should be doing while driving, but how do you test for that with a Breathalyzer?
Fair points but I think this testing is only about smoking? That would seem to give even less reason to support this kind of testing since it misses the most egregious cases of edibles. I think anyone would agree that people in that kind of state are in no condition to drive, but again in my experience way outside of normal usage and not something I have ever seen. If the test took that into account alright, but it seems like these breathalyzer would be detecting a far lower threshold
Edit: "Theyre working on it" when it comes to edibles....
The problem is that you can't really test for these tolerances, especially not in the field. That's why it's usually better to air on the side of caution and set a limit.