DRIVER SMOKED POT BEFORE FATAL CRASH

EDMONTON - Jonathan Williams showed signs of being a frequent marijuana
smoker and likely smoked a great deal before the fatal collision between
his City of Edmonton truck and a motorcycle.

And he could have been on the tail end of an LSD trip when the crash
occurred, although no traces of that drug turned up in blood tests, a
forensic toxicologist testified Friday.

Williams, 27, is being tried for the death of 18-year-old Cynthia Martin,
who died in the Sept. 4, 2001, collision at 142nd Street and Valleyview Drive.

He is in Court of Queen's Bench on charges of impaired driving causing
death, criminal negligence causing death, dangerous driving causing death
and leaving the scene of an accident.

Heather Dinn of the RCMP laboratory in Vancouver said the level of
tetrahydrocannibonal, or THC, found in Williams's blood five hours after
the crash was typical of the amount found in the blood about two or three
hours after smoking a single joint.

"This situation would not have been attained with the smoking of a
normal-concentration cannabis joint, but would arise from either multiple
joints in a short time frame or ingestion of a high concentration of plant
product ... or hash or hash oil," Dinn said.

Williams also had a level of carboxy-THC, which is produced in the body as
the THC is metabolized, of 87 nanograms per millilitre of blood.

Dinn said this is far above what a casual smoker would have in the blood
and added that a daily user typically has a level of 25.

"I'm able to say the person was a frequent user or a daily user, but I
can't say how much was ingested," she said.

Tests for marijuana in the bloodstream aren't as straightforward or
revealing of the level at a particular time as blood-alcohol tests, she said.

Dinn said marijuana impairs the ability to safely drive a vehicle in a
number of ways, including judgment of speed, perception of distance and
ability to focus on a number of different things at once, which is
essential for navigating a vehicle through traffic.

But under cross-examination, she acknowledged that there is no clear cutoff
level of THC in the blood where it becomes unsafe to drive a vehicle, as
there is in alcohol consumption.

While evidence came out earlier this week in a police video where Williams
said he had taken two hits of LSD, blood tests for that drug were negative.

The drug stops being detectable eight to 12 hours after it is taken, but,
because the blood was taken five hours after the accident, it is possible
he was under the influence of LSD at the time of the crash, she said.

Some of the symptoms he showed, such as seeing a talking dog and the devil,
are LSD-type hallucinations but could also come from high doses of marijuana.