THC driving: Schedule I and II drugs out, bill again focused entirely on pot

By Michael Roberts Mon., Apr. 30 2012 at 10:24 AM

Categories: Follow That Story, Marijuana, Politics

Continued from page 1

Pat Steadman.

"In my mind, this is not a solution to the professed problem," he replies. "People are being arrested, charged and convicted under the current law, and so I don't really buy the idea that we need a greater deterrent to impaired driving. Right now, there's something like 95 or 96 percent convictions [without the 5 nanogram standard], so proving impairment in court doesn't appear to be a problem.

"The whole point of the bill is to make the DA's job easier, because there would be even less they'd have to prove. But does it really create a deterrent when we have such a high conviction rate already?The bill just allows DAs to be lazy."

There's also the possibility of people who aren't legitimately impaired being convicted because of the new standard. "If, for some reason, someone gets into a situation where a blood test is taken, then 'boom,' they're guilty. Now, admittedly blood draws usually occur when there's been an accident or someone has been pulled over -- they don't tend to happen randomly. But if it's that easy to convict, maybe they would start to happen randomly more in the future."

At this point, Steadman believes his colleagues' opinions are all over the map. "There are some people who think this bill is too liberal, some people who think it's too conservative, some people who think this bill solves a problem, some people who think this bill is a solution in search of a problem. There are very diverse opinions, and how exactly it's all going to go down, I'm not sure."

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