DEATH OF POLICE OFFICER NOT THE ONLY TRAGEDY

The death of Reno police officer Mike Scofield is a tragedy. The law
that dictates the minimum threshold of marijuana in a person's system
that causes impairment is causing tragic results.

While Nevada is within its rights to criminalize marijuana, it has far
exceeded those rights by linking impairment with presence. Numerous
studies show that 2 nanograms per milliliter is not indicative of
impairment. Toxicologists have found it impossible to quantify an
exact impairment cutoff for marijuana because of the extreme effects
that frequency of use and body fat have on residual THC levels. But
prosecutors didn't have to show impairment in Ms. Jackson's case; mere
presence was enough to convict. The Nevada marijuana law is akin to
labeling a driver alcohol-impaired who has a BAC of 0.01 (DUI
threshold is 0.08).

Nevada legislators who enacted the per-se marijuana impairment law
must have hoped to see declines in drugged driving injuries. While
that is noble, creating an arbitrary threshold that links impairment
with presence is immoral and only serves to replace one tragedy with
another. How many Ms. Jacksons will it take before the Legislature
acts?

Kurt Unger

Sparks