LEGISLATORS SHOULD REVISE LAW ON POT AND DRIVING

Statute Makes Criminals Out of Too Many People

The Michigan Supreme Court has brought the drug war to the highways.
That's not a good place for it.

Traffic laws should not be used to entrap users of illegal
drugs.

But ruling in two traffic cases, a majority of the justices opened the
door for that by saying a trace element of marijuana in any driver's
body, regardless of whether it has an influence on the ability to
drive safely, is sufficient for a conviction of an impaired driving
violation.

The ruling also said the driver does not have to know he or she is
legally under the influence of a prohibited drug.

In one of the two consolidated cases, a Detroit woman who admitted
smoking marijuana four hours before the accident crossed over into
oncoming traffic and collided with another vehicle, killing the
front-seat passenger, paralyzing two children in the back seat and
injuring a third.

In another, a driver was stopped for erratic driving. He admitted
consuming two beers and smoking marijuana a half hour before taking
the wheel.

The issue in these cases is not whether these drivers should face
punishment. Rather, it's whether 11-carboxy-THC, a metabolized remnant
of marijuana, constitutes a controlled substance under state law. The
law states that driving with any amount of certain controlled
substances in one's body constitutes an offense.

In a ruling written by Justice Maura Corrigan and joined by Chief
Justice Clifford Taylor and Justices Stephen Markman and Robert Young,
the court's majority held that the trace amount did constitute a
controlled substance. The ruling noted that marijuana or any "compound
and derivative" in the body while driving is prohibited by the statute.

This court's majority is noted for trying to closely follow the
wording of the law, and that's not a bad thing. In this instance, they
were stuck with the language of the statute.

But is it a wise statute? As dissenting Justice Michael Cavanagh
noted, "this means that weeks, months and even years after marijuana
was ingested, a person cannot drive a car without breaking the law if
a test can detect the presence of 11-carboxy-THC."

The language of the statute criminalizes too many people who may not
be actually impaired. The state should set specific levels of
marijuana and other drugs in a body for determining impairment, just
as it does for alcohol. Traffic laws should be used to ensure the
safety of the roadways, and not as a surrogate for fighting the drug
war.

The law should focus on whether a driver's judgment is affected -- not
whether he or she may have used marijuana days, weeks or months before
a traffic incident. This ruling is one of the results of a
counterproductive, "zero tolerance" approach to drugs by the
Legislature.

Such an approach will always produce unintended consequence and absurd
laws.

Driving under the influence of any mind-altering substance and putting
other people at risk of death or injury should be a serious offense.
But merely having trace elements of an illegal substance in one's body
should not. Let the police on road patrol enforce traffic laws rather
than turning them into narcs.