TOO HIGH TO DRIVE? ROADSIDE TESTS CAN'T REALLY SAY.
“I just stopped driving completely.”
That was the answer Brendan Quinlan gave when asked how he feels about the new impaired driving laws for marijuana.
Quinlan is a medical marijuana patient and licensed producer who says the new regulations leave him no other option.
“I got no choice,” Quinlan, who lives in Holyrood N.L., said. “I know I’m not impaired but to go out and take a chance on getting pulled over and going to jail, I can’t take that risk.”
Under the current laws, drivers with can be charged with drug-impaired driving if they have more than two nanograms (ng) of THC (the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana) in their blood. Between two and five nets a $1,000 fine and five or over can get you up to 10 years in jail.
The problem, says Quinlan and others, is that the roadside screening device they use doesn’t measure impairment, and even if a person is found not to be impaired they can have their licence suspended and vehicle seized. According to the Highway Traffic Act of Newfoundland and Labrador, a driver who provides a sample of a bodily substance that shows an amount of drugs exceeding the legal limit will have their licence suspended for 90 days.
Provincial legislation changed to reflect Bill C-46, the federal impaired driving legislation that passed along with Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act. It allowed the use of these roadside screening devices and the subsequent blood test used to measure impairment if one fails the roadside test. Failing the roadside test is not a criminal offense but the legislation allows a vehicle to still be seized and licence suspended.
Quinlan said with the amount of cannabis concentrates he consumes he would always fail the roadside screening device, even if he isn’t impaired.
“I take some of that oil in the nighttime, the next morning I’ll still fail that,” he said. “It’s silly, no one gets in trouble for being drunk a day before.”
He’s concerned that marijuana is being lumped in with alcohol in terms of impaired driving, when the two are far different.
“You can’t even compare them,” he said. “Someone smokes a bunch of weed they know they’re too high to drive and they’ll wait until they sober up. Get someone with a dozen beer in him and he’s sure he can drive anywhere.”