We Aren't Ready for the Future of Impaired Driving. #opinion

Let me start this rant by saying that I am proud to live in a country with a government that is fair, just, and democratic. By and large, I do not have to worry about corruption, human rights violations, or an absence of the rule of law. Is my government perfect? Absolutely not, but it does its job reasonably well for the most part.

And, yet, the justice system failed a 70-year old car enthusiast from my community.

The story starts Wednesday morning in court. A 17-year old boy went to court to answer to a series of charges. According to his mother and step-father, he was so high that he was slurring, slobbering and swearing throughout the court appearance. For the sake of being topical, I am going to assume that the teenager was high on marijuana, but that is purely speculation at this point. Now, I’m not a legal expert by any means, but I am pretty certain that showing up to court high is a pretty good reason to find a defendant in contempt of court.

Apparently, the judge didn’t. He released the teenager despite pleas from his family to do something to get their son off of the streets in his condition. Now, I get it. Contempt is a very discretional charge, and there has to be some pretty significant evidence in order to jail someone for it. In this situation, I get that the judge is running the risk of violating that teen’s civil liberties by throwing him in jail for being high on something. The other side of the story has yet to be told, and a lot of assumptions are being made, but the end result is a real wake-up call to any countries looking at the possibility of legalizing cannabis.

The same 17-year old who, impaired as he was, was released from court, later crashed his girlfriend’s car into a telehandler (the same thing that Jules Bianchi crashed into), and careened across the centre median directly into the path of a Volkswagen Type 1 driven by a 70-year old man, who died at the scene. The impact was so violent that debris was scattered all the way across the freeway (motorway), which caused the road to be shut down for several hours. The 17-year old survived and was charged with, among other things, dangerous driving causing death.

Although it’s merely speculated at this point that the teenager was under the influence of drugs in court and at the time of the crash, let’s just assume that he was. Like I said before, that seems to be, in my mind, reasonable grounds to be found in contempt of court. The judge should have remanded the teenager; and, by his failure to do so, the judge is an accessory (to some extent) in the death of the Volkswagen driver.

But maybe the judge didn’t have much other choice.

You see, field testing for marijuana and/or other cannabis products is controversial. Field testing kits are notorious for generating false positives, so I would find it hard to believe that they would be used as an evidenciary benchmark. In addition, it’s highly possible to test positive long after the effects of marijuana have worn off. But the most worrying evidence comes from a study done by the AAA, which claims that there is no scientific way to determine if a driver is stoned.

In the case of drunk driving, police have a reasonably accurate, minimally-invasive, easy-to-administer roadside test for intoxication: a breathalyzer. This means that, if you get pulled over while driving drunk, you will be caught and there will be evidence against you. Now, you would think that drunk driving would be a thing of the past in light of this invention. You would think that the massive barrage of emotionally-charged PSAs and criminal penalties would make drunk driving a thing of the past. You would think that drunk driving would become so socially unacceptable that people would be conditioned to avoid it.

In my home province of Saskatchewan, however, drinking and driving is still a huge problem. The deputy premier of our province, Don McMorris, recently pleaded guilty to DUI of alcohol. Imagine that: if a high-ranking member of our legislature is not immune to doing something so blatantly stupid and irresponsible, then what is stopping the blue-collar average Joe from doing the same? Are we that devoid of conscience?

Apparently, we are. The AAA study mentioned earlier found that the rate of fatal crashes involving drivers who recently used cannabis doubled in Washington after they legalized marijuana. Remember, we don’t even have a scientific way to prove if someone is stoned, so the risk of getting caught and convicted of stoned driving seems to be a lot lower. Yet, knowing that he would fail a fairly accurate alcohol sobriety test, and realizing that his political career would be ruined if he got caught, even Don McMorris decided that the risk was worth it.

This highlights a major issue in the debate on legalization of cannabis. Any DUI lawyer would easily be able to argue reasonable doubt for clients on trial for driving while stoned. And this has me worried. What’s to stop someone who just did some fat dabs from driving, knowing that he is unlikely to be punished? You could open up a whole Pandora’s box at the expense of public safety.

At the end of the day, if we are going to legalize marijuana, we need to be able to have some sort of effective punishment to keep people who are too stoned to drive off of the roads. Failing that, and the 70-year old Volkswagen enthusiast will be far from the last person to pay for that with his life.