Medicinal cannabis, driving under influence, law reform

[fyzygy]

https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2023/24/why-medical-cannabis-patients-should-be-allowed-to-drive/

 

[saguaro]

I think you might be preaching to the choir with this one. The cannabis driving laws are ridiculous, even for "recreational" users. A field sobriety test or something is all we need, rather than some sketchy swab with high false positives where you can lose your license and livelihood for smoking weed 3 days ago.

 

I found this bit pretty funny:

 

"What does the evidence say about medical cannabis and driving?

 

It is important to distinguish recreational cannabis laws and risks to driving compared with the prescribing of medical cannabis products containing THC prescribed by doctors for medical reasons.

 

Recreational cannabis contains unknown concentrations of THC with the aim to obtain a “high” from higher levels. This is not the aim with Medical Cannabis products."

 

Someone's gotta break it to them that people are indeed aiming to get high off medical cannabis products. A good proportion, possibly the majority of patients want to get 'high' from cannabis as a primary motivation, rather than to treat a medical condition. Granted I'm in a younger cohort, but pretty much everyone I know who uses it are recreational users fed up with the black market. 

 

 And while recreational cannabis contains unknown concentrations of THC, surely if THC as a driving-impairing drug is what we're discussing, it doesn't matter where it comes from. The only difference is you have a slightly better idea of how strong it is. This is more of an argument for legalisation than for punishing drivers who smoke the crime weed. Just cause the medical weed says T25 - there is going to be biological variation between each batch that could be as high or higher than 5%. There's also medical cannabis out there with %'s of 30+, it would be rare to find black market that strong, let alone stronger.

 

On a side note - Has anyone here ever been so impaired off cannabis alone that they felt they were unable to drive?

[Wood Chuck]

They have  found out that people driving with medical cannabis in there system, have also lost there jobs. It should be treated as any other medication, like a lot of other laws, it hasn`t been thought through properly and hopefully things will change.