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Meds Cannabis and Driving

herbivore21

Well-Known Member
A lot of us discuss medical cannabis usage and its possible effects on the user's driving capacities frequently. Indeed, we'll all have noticed by now that the effects can be quite subjective, as are the effects of cannabis more broadly.

Thankfully, the medical community already recognize the subjectivity of cannabis' effects on driving.

Some of you may be aware that GW Pharmaceuticals is a pharma company who have for decades now produced preparations made from cannabis actives. One such example is Sativex, a product made via bubble hash extraction (in the medical literature, this is described as an 'enriched trichome preparation' (or ETP). Subsequently, the ETP is subjected to distillation and then further homogenization before emulsion in carrier solvents (ethanol accounts for 50% V/V of the product, it also contains PG which even the Sativex consumer information highlights can cause respiratory/throat irritation) to increase bioavailability as an oral-mucosal spray.

Check this out from the Sativex consumer information provided to UK patients about driving:

"Driving and using machines:
• You must not drive or use machinery when you first start to take Sativex and until you are established on a stable
daily dose.
• Sativex may cause you to feel sleepy or dizzy, which may impair your judgment and performance of skilled tasks.
It has also rarely been reported to cause a brief loss of consciousness.
• Once you are more used to taking Sativex and your dose is stable, you should still not drive or use machinery if Sativex causes effects such as sleepiness or dizziness that could impair your ability to perform these tasks. If you are not sure, do not drive or operate machines. The medicine can affect your ability to drive as it may make you sleepy or dizzy.
• Do not drive while taking this medicine until you know how it affects you."

Source: https://www.drugs.com/uk/sativex-oromucosal-spray-spc-10018.html

As I've said over in the High Vs. Stoned thread, this is good advice for all of us IMO, no matter your preferred cannabis medicine. If you are new to medical cannabis and driving, please consider this advice before getting behind the wheel :biggrin:
 
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I've always treated driving on cannabis the same way I would treat driving under the influence of alcohol. If I have one or two beers I can drive home because I am well under the legal limit still and my buzz does not impair my driving skill. While there's no legal limit for marijuana I still tend to treat it much the same way with how I feel. If I take a few hits and only have a light buzz I can drive home no problem. If I take three consecutive ELB bowls from my EVO there is no way I am getting behind the wheel for the foreseeable future.
 
I've always treated driving on cannabis the same way I would treat driving under the influence of alcohol. If I have one or two beers I can drive home because I am well under the legal limit still and my buzz does not impair my driving skill. While there's no legal limit for marijuana I still tend to treat it much the same way with how I feel. If I take a few hits and only have a light buzz I can drive home no problem. If I take three consecutive ELB bowls from my EVO there is no way I am getting behind the wheel for the foreseeable future.
This is a perfect example of the subjectivity of cannabis' effects on different people's driving.

If I dab a large hit of full melt, I am fine to drive moments later. YMMV and this is why the above information advises not to drive until you know how cannabis derivatives effect you personally :twocents:
 
Main » News Releases » Location » United States » CRS Report: THC Levels Not Correlated With Driver Impairment
CRS Report: THC Levels Not Correlated With Driver Impairment[/paste:font]
Thursday, 13 June 2019

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Washington, DC: The presence of THC in blood is not a consistent predictor of either driver performance or impairment, according to the conclusions of a new Congressional Research Service report assessing cannabis and psychomotor performance.

The report acknowledges: "Research studies have been unable to consistently correlate levels of marijuana consumption, or THC in a person's body, and levels of impairment. Thus, some researchers, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, have observed that using a measure of THC as evidence of a driver's impairment is not supported by scientific evidence to date."

It further reports that data is "conflicting" with regard to whether marijuana usage plays a substantial role in traffic accidents, noting, "Levels of impairment that can be identified in laboratory settings may not have a significant impact in real world settings, where many variables affect the likelihood of a crash occurring."

It concludes: "There is as yet no scientifically demonstrated correlation between levels of THC and degrees of impairment of driver performance, and epidemiological studies disagree as to whether marijuana use by a driver results in increased crash risk. ... Based on current knowledge and enforcement capabilities, it is not possible to articulate a similarly simple level or rate of marijuana consumption and a corresponding effect on driving ability."

The findings are consistent with prior studies by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and others reporting that the presence of THC in blood, particularly at low levels, is not consistently correlated with either psychomotor impairment or crash culpability.

Six states – Illinois, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington – impose various per selimits for the presence of specific amounts of THC in blood while twelve states (Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota Utah, and Wisconsin) impose zero tolerant per se standards. In those states, it is a criminal violation of the traffic safety laws to operate a motor vehicle with any detectable levels of THC in blood. Colorado law infers driver impairment in instances where THC is detected in blood at levels of 5ng/ml or higher
 
I go to a cannabis store where just recently one of the bud tenders was killed in a car wreck on his way home at 2:00AM. He had weaved in the other lane. The other person was slightly injured and was arrested because she was under the influence of alcohol.

I’m sure this bud tender will have cannabis in his blood when the testing comes back in a month or so.
Even though possibly he had not used cannabis that day. So in the newspaper it will probably state that he had cannabis in his system. They don’t have an adequate test for cannabis and it’s too bad. It looks like it was his fault but it’s a bad part of the highway with a weird roundabout. He over corrected and went into the other drivers lane.

I keep seeing his face in my mind and want him to have a good reputation and not tarnished for his families sake.:twocents::weed:
 
I go to a cannabis store where just recently one of the bud tenders was killed in a car wreck on his way home at 2:00AM. He had weaved in the other lane. The other person was slightly injured and was arrested because she was under the influence of alcohol.

I’m sure this bud tender will have cannabis in his blood when the testing comes back in a month or so.
Even though possibly he had not used cannabis that day. So in the newspaper it will probably state that he had cannabis in his system. They don’t have an adequate test for cannabis and it’s too bad. It looks like it was his fault but it’s a bad part of the highway with a weird roundabout. He over corrected and went into the other drivers lane.

I keep seeing his face in my mind and want him to have a good reputation and not tarnished for his families sake.:twocents::weed:
I'm sure his family loved him, and they likely knew he was a bud tender. It's not unlikely that some of them use meds as well. There isn't the same stigma there once was, and a bud tender in the family would be a good ambassador for mmj. At that time of night, it's just as likely tiredness was involved, and he might have even been on a T-break. They knew this fine man for who he was, and grief over losing him is going to be more of a concern then blame. It grieves me to think if your kind heart worrying @CarolKing, on top of missing this dear man. Perhaps you might write a note to the family sharing your fond memories of what a good man he was? That would be a comfort to the family, I'm sure.
My husband killed himself, and the last thing I worried about was blame, or what people would think. The loss itself was great enough to deal with. Bless you for caring, and your concern is touching. I'm sorry for your loss.
 
I rarely drive at all anymore, if I was in an accident here while having THC in my system I would be at fault, even if I was just asleep sitting in my car off the side of the road.
Subjective highness makes sense, the sobriety test I see in movies, walking a straight line while reciting the alphabet etc would make sense.:thumbsup:
I knew a couple where the man was a pisspot and his wife a near tea totaller, after a pissup his wife had had 3 glasses of bubbly and felt too pissed to drive like she normally would, Murphy's Law saw a breatho van check that saw he was about twice the legal limit, he asked them to check his wife for 'shits and giggles' and she was under the legal limit, even though she was incapable of driving.:shakehead:
 
I rarely drive at all anymore, if I was in an accident here while having THC in my system I would be at fault, even if I was just asleep sitting in my car off the side of the road.

Mate that is a gauntlet I run daily. These days I don't vape & drive but I will almost certainly have it in my system even if I am sober. Twice in the last couple of months I have been pulled over for speeding & breathalysed each time. Thank fuck I was not swabbed but I think getting a 0.0 reading on the RBT helped.
 
I freely confess that I have driven when I was too high to drive safely: I was young, and stupid, and had not developed a fully-activated ECS.

Things I learned: if you can’t remember how to walk, making it into the car doesn’t mean you can drive; waking up staring at a green light and wondering where you are IS NOT COOL; wandering around as if you don’t know where you are or where you’re going WILL draw the wrong kind of attention; just because you haven’t killed or destroyed anything yet DOESN’T mean you’re good.

If you’re rushing, if you’re dizzy, if you stand up and suddenly sit down again, wait AT LEAST another hour, and start getting your body back in hand, and at the end of that hour, check in with yourself again: unsteady on your feet, brain feeling sluggish, attention has a life of its own? Wait another hour, and eat something if possible while you wait.
 
It seems that Drug Driving is one of the last straws the anti-mmj people are clutching at for a reason to keep pot banned. I saw on the news here about a person being involved in an accident in the USA where a driver was killed (other driver tested positive to THC)and the parents of the poor person that died have been indoctrinated into the anti ranks going on and on about how pot is a Killer drug. So Oz news, of course, jumped on the bandwagon over one death in another country...no ones death is trivial, but I wondered how many drunk drivers had caused fatalities that day just in Oz.
@ClearBlueLou, I like your self-regulation plan.:thumbsup:
 
In era of legal pot, can police still search cars based on odor?

Sniff and search is no longer the default for police in some of the 33 states that have legalized marijuana.

Traditionally, an officer could use the merest whiff of weed to justify a warrantless vehicle search, and whatever turned up — pot, other kinds of illegal drugs, something else the motorist wasn’t allowed to have — could be used as evidence in court.

That’s still true in the minority of states where marijuana remains verboten. But the legal analysis is more complicated in places where pot has been approved for medical or adult use, and courts are beginning to weigh in. The result is that, in some states, a police officer who sniffs out pot isn’t necessarily allowed to go through someone’s automobile — because the odor by itself is no longer considered evidence of a crime.

“It’s becoming more difficult to say, ‘I smell marijuana, I can search the car.’ It’s not always an automatic thing,” said Kyle Clark, who oversees drug impairment recognition training programs at the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

For nearly 100 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized an “automobile exception” to the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures, giving law enforcement the right to conduct a warrantless search if there is reason to suspect a vehicle is hiding contraband or evidence of a crime. Police have long used the exception to conduct vehicle searches based on the pungent, distinctive odor of pot.

Increasingly, motorists in states where marijuana is legal in some form are pushing back when police insist on a search — especially if that search yields evidence of a crime.

Last month, a Pennsylvania judge declared that state police didn’t have a valid legal reason for searching a car just because it smelled like cannabis, since the front-seat passenger had a medical marijuana card. The search yielded a loaded handgun and a small amount of marijuana in an unmarked plastic baggie — evidence the judge suppressed.

“The ‘plain smell’ of marijuana alone no longer provides authorities with probable cause to conduct a search of a subject vehicle,” Lehigh County Judge Maria Dantos wrote, because it’s “no longer indicative of an illegal or criminal act.” She said that once the passenger presented his medical marijuana card, it was “illogical, impractical and unreasonable” for troopers to conclude a crime had been committed.

Prosecutors have appealed the ruling, arguing the search was legal under recent state Supreme Court precedent. But they acknowledge that marijuana odor is an evolving issue in the courts.

“We want to get it right,” said Heather Gallagher, chief of appeals in the district attorney’s office. “We need guidance, so law enforcement knows what to do.”

Other states’ courts have curtailed searches based on odor.

Massachusetts’ highest court has said repeatedly that the smell of marijuana alone cannot justify a warrantless vehicle search. In Vermont, the state Supreme Court ruled in January that the “faint odor of burnt marijuana” didn’t give state police the right to impound and search a man’s car. Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled in May that because a drug-detection dog was trained to sniff for marijuana — which is legal in the state — along with several illegal drugs, police could not use the dog’s alert to justify a vehicle search.

A container of marijuana found during a search of a car by Cook County Sheriff police officers is seen as officers take a man into custody in the Austin neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois, United States, September 10, 2015. Photo by REUTERS/Jim Young

A container of marijuana found during a search of a car by Cook County Sheriff police officers is seen as officers take a man into custody in the Austin neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois, United States, September 10, 2015. Photo by REUTERS/Jim Young
“Smell alone is gradually becoming no excuse for getting around the Fourth Amendment,” said Keith Stroup, legal director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “It’s a major development, and it’s going to provide a layer of protection that we lost sometime in the past.”

But not every court has ruled against sniff and search.

Maryland’s high court quoted the title of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin'” in ruling last month that police did an unlawful body search of a motorist whose car smelled of marijuana and contained a joint on the center console. But the court also decided that police were entitled to search the car itself, noting that marijuana is still considered contraband despite the state’s medical marijuana program, and people have a “diminished expectation of privacy” in an automobile.

Judges have also ruled that marijuana odor can be used in conjunction with other factors to support a search. If the smell is overpowering, for example, an officer might conclude the motorist has a quantity of cannabis far in excess of what’s allowed. Driving under the influence of marijuana is illegal in all 50 states, so police are free to search the car of a driver who shows signs of impairment.

The longstanding federal ban on marijuana, and whether a state’s marijuana law is broad or narrow in scope, are additional factors that courts have considered, said Alex Kreit, visiting professor at the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at Ohio State University’s law school.

On patrol, some officers are taking heed of the changing landscape.

In Michigan, medical marijuana patient Craig Canterbury said he produced his ID card after state police told him they smelled marijuana in his van during a traffic stop last year.

“They looked at the card, made sure it was legal, and that was that,” Canterbury said. He said he wouldn’t have agreed to a vehicle search “because I had shown we were legal.”

When David Boyer, former Maine political director of the Marijuana Policy Project, was pulled over for speeding last year, the officer said she smelled marijuana in his car. Boyer, who said he had consumed cannabis at a friend’s house several hours earlier, reminded the officer it was legal in Maine and told her he wasn’t under the influence.

“She pushed back a little bit on it but ultimately, I just got the speeding ticket,” Boyer said.

The officer didn’t ask to search the car.
 
My personal view.... while I can drive after vaping... I would never even consider driving on edibles. And since they affect each person differently... who's to say how long the effects will last? Or in the one case that I had (where it took 18 hours to get off on them), how long it will take to effect you after consuming.

How long should I be waiting to drive after consuming edible cannabis?

Since I don’t like inhaling things, I’d always avoided marijuana. A few months ago, I discovered weed gummies and I find they help me calm down in the evening so I can sleep. How long should I be waiting to drive after taking them? Even after a year of legalization, I’m really not clear on how marijuana affects driving. – Carin, Vancouver

With pot edibles, figuring out when you’ll be safe to drive is a lot hazier than if you’ve smoked or vaped. But you should be waiting longer than you think.

“Edibles are different from inhaling – they affect every single person differently and each edible has different effects,” says Andrew Murie, CEO of Mothers Against Drink Driving (MADD) Canada. “For edibles, you really need to sleep it off. If you’ve really overdone it, you could still be having some of the effects the next morning.”

Exactly how long should you be waiting? There’s no clear answer yet. But it should be longer than if you’d inhaled.

On its website, Health Canada says, generally, the effects of inhaled cannabis could last six hours or more. But if you eat or drink it, the effects could last up to 12 hours.


“With edibles, the impairment lasts longer and it takes longer to dissipate from the body,” Murie says.

And the after-effects of both, including drowsiness, could last up to 24 hours.

Ottawa says it won’t give guidelines on how long you should be waiting to drive after eating or inhaling it.

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) recommends that people wait at least six hours before driving after smoking pot.

“Six hours is a general guideline for inhaling, but it doesn’t apply to medical users, new users or people who are mixing it with alcohol or other drugs, who all have to wait longer,” Murie says. “Edibles are a lot less predictable – nobody’s comfortable putting a number on it.”


DON’T EAT AND DRIVE

You’ll feel the effect of vaping or smoking pot within 30 minutes. But with edibles, it can take up to two hours to start to feel the effects and up to four hours to feel the full effects.

“You might eat a cookie and think you’ve got an hour and a half to get home, but what if it kicks while you’re on the road?” Murie says.

He suggests going “low and slow” – consuming a small amount, seeing how it affects you and not driving at all until the next day.

“Do not mix it with alcohol, it makes the impairment worse,” Murie says.

New rules came into effect last week that allow cannabis edibles and oils to be approved by Health Canada and, eventually, sold legally in stores.

Those rules also limit the amount of THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis, to 10 milligrams. But there are edibles already out there, sold on the internet and in dispensaries.


“Until now, there was no research on edibles and impairment because they were illegal,” Murie says. “We won’t know what a cookie with 2.5 milligrams of THC will have on driving until there’s research.”

COULD YOU BE CHARGED?

If you think you’re safe to drive just a couple of hours after a few gummies, you still might be over the legal limit to drive a car.

If police suspect you’re impaired by pot, however you’ve consumed it, they can either ask you to take an oral fluid test – where they take a scrape of saliva off your tongue and put it into a machine – or the standard field sobriety test.

The oral fluid test doesn’t show the specific level of THC in your blood, but it reads fail if you are above 5 milligrams, the minimum amount for a criminal charge.

“I feel really conformable saying that anybody who fails the oral fluid test took cannabis in the last couple of hours and shouldn’t be driving,” Murie says.

You won’t be charged based on the oral fluid test. Instead, if you failed either test, then police could demand a blood test, which would show your actual blood concentration of THC. You’d be charged based on that.


But by the time you actually get a blood test, you might have no THC in your blood. And, a year into legalization, many police forces have had struggles figuring out how to get blood tests done at all, Murie says,

While the RCMP’s National Forensic Laboratory expected to see 800 blood tests in the first year, there’ve only been about 215, the RCMP says.

“With cannabis, if you wait more than two hours, it might be gone,” Murie says. “And there’s been a big problem so far with the timeliness of these blood tests.”
 
I vape and drive
But I agree, edibles can be so random how they affect people it could get dodgy
They seem to hit quick once they start to come on and often you don't realise till you are hammered that it is happening
 
Game on!!! :biggrin:

A paradigm shift in impairment testing for cannabis: The DRUID® App
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Introducing DRUID (DRiving Under the Influence of Drugs) the public health app testing for cannabis – measuring your level of competency essential to skillful driving.
Consuming cannabis affects the body and mind in many different ways. Of particular concern is the functional impairment that can result, comprising slowed reaction time, reduced hand-eye coordination, poorer balance, and difficulty performing divided attention tasks. Some people use cannabis to experience a ‘high’ and become too impaired to drive safely, while others consume cannabis for medical reasons and may want to avoid its impairing effects. Being able to reliably measure testing for cannabis and one’s own level of impairment has been impossible – until now.

DRUIDapp, Inc. has developed a new public health app that provides an objective measure of impairment due to cannabis or any other source such as alcohol, prescription drugs, illicit (‘street’) drugs, polydrug use, sleep deprivation, fatigue, concussion, and cognitive or physical decline due to illness or aging.

The app is named DRUID® – an acronym for ‘DRiving Under the Influence of Drugs,’ though the app can be used for many purposes, not just to reduce drug-related traffic crashes. The current personal-use version of DRUID functions on both the iOS and Android platforms and is available now in both the App Store and Google Play.

How does DRUID work?
Taking only two minutes, DRUID calls on users to perform four tasks which test their reaction time, decision making ability, hand eye coordination, time estimation, and balance, all of which are basic competencies essential to skillful driving and that research studies have found to be impaired following alcohol, cannabis, or opioid use (Bondallaz et al., 2016; Downey et al., 2013; Jongen, Vuurman, Ramaekers, & Vermameeren, 2014; Sewell et al., 2013).

Three of the tasks are performed under conditions of divided attention. Hundreds of measurements are integrated statistically using a proprietary algorithm and then transformed to an overall impairment score that can range from 0 to 100. Most scores fall between 30 and 70. Absent any impairment, a typical baseline score for DRUID is generally in the range of 32 to 42.

The data collected to date indicates that DRUID is an excellent measure for tracking impairment after alcohol or cannabis consumption. For example, DRUID scores show the highest level of impairment within 30 to 45 minutes of beginning cannabis inhalation, and then decrease over a period of 2 to 3 hours, as would be expected as the body processes its psychoactive components.

DRUID is being employed by cannabis investigators from several US universities. One of the top cannabis researchers, Dr. Ryan Vandrey of the Johns Hopkins University Medical Institute, and his colleagues examined the relationship between dosage-controlled cannabis administration and DRUID impairment scores.

Their data, displayed in Fig. 2, show that the app is able to discriminate impairment resulting from different levels of cannabis consumption, for both vapourised cannabis and edibles, specifically 0mg (placebo), 5 mg, and 20mg (vapourised) or 25 mg (edible). Additional research using DRUID is being conducted by investigators based at the University of Kentucky and Yale university.

Fig-2-sc-1068x601.jpg


Fig. 2 DRUID® Impairment Scores Over Time Following Varying Doses of Cannabis University of Colorado-Boulder, the University of Sydney and Yale University

DRUID – for personal safety
Knowing their impairment score, the app users can choose not to drive, perform safety-sensitive work, or engage in other potentially dangerous activities if they decide they are too impaired to do so. Before DRUID, there was not an accurate and reliable way for individuals to gauge their level of impairment, leading many people to overestimate their capacity to drive or work safely and thus putting themselves and others at risk of harm.

DRUID can also make a substantial contribution to medical cannabis practice. As is the case for many prescribed medications, using cannabis as prescribed may lead some patients to experience functional impairment. This possibility is often a source of considerable anxiety for patients inexperienced with cannabis who are rightfully worried about the impact of the drug’s physiological and psychological effects on their ability to drive, work, or perform other everyday tasks.

However, by using DRUID medical providers can work with their patients to identify the best dosage for treating their symptoms while also producing the least impairment possible. Of course, DRUID also provides a way for patients to assess the level of impairment they are experiencing after taking their medication, after which they can postpone driving or other potentially dangerous activities until it is safer.

DRUID – for worker safety
Worldwide, hundreds of millions of workers are in safety-sensitive jobs, including transportation, utilities, construction, manufacturing, warehousing, oil extraction and refining, mining, chemical production, public safety, private security, medicine, and many others. The impact of alcohol and other drug use on worker safety is a long-standing concern but has taken on even greater importance as the movement to legalise cannabis continues to gain momentum in the US and around the world.

Understandably, many employers have sought to protect their company or agency by requiring drug testing as a condition of employment or by conducting random drug tests. Both of these practices might be defensible when employees are in safety sensitive jobs or an employer is otherwise justified in asserting a zero tolerance policy for any illegal substance use. In addition, employers may require drug testing in response to accidents or other work performance issues.

It is important to note that, where cannabis use has been made legal, an employer’s legitimate concern – with some exceptions – is not the employees’ cannabis use per se, but the functional impairment that might result. Obviously, pre-employment testing no matter its accuracy, cannot guarantee that, on a particular day, an employee was not impaired and therefore fit for duty.

Urine drug tests conducted at random or after an incident can detect the presence of parent compounds or their metabolites, but as noted in a recent Cochrane Review article (Els, Jackson, Milen, Kunyk, & Straube, 2018), “this does not necessarily correlate to the level of impairment,” meaning that “the presence of a positive drug test does not necessarily confirm that the worker was impaired at the time of the work-related incident or accident.”

Thus, it is clear that as cannabis is legalised around the world for medical and recreational use, the mere presence of cannabis-related compounds becomes irrelevant, and this drug testing approach will no longer have any value.

Blood testing is also of little or no value. THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) is fat soluble, and the THC stored in body fat can reintroduced into the bloodstream as long as 30 days following cannabis use, whereas its psychoactive effects last only a few hours (Compton, 2017). It is not surprising then that studies consistently report that “the level of THC in the blood and the degree of impairment do not appear to be closely related” (Compton, 2017). In short, THC concentration in the blood is not a valid indicator of impairment. High impairment can be found with low THC levels, and low impairment can be found with high THC levels.

Dräger, Inc. has developed a machine to analyse oral fluids for drugs of abuse, including cannabinoids, amphetamines, designer amphetamines, opiates, cocaine and metabolites, benzodiazepines, and methadone (Grünberg, 2019). The Dräger DrugTest® 5000 can detect the presence of THC in a just few minutes, in contrast to blood drug tests, which need to be analysed off site at a special facility. Very small amounts of THC pass from the bloodstream into saliva, which means that this test suffers from the same limitation as blood tests; it can detect recent cannabis use but cannot assess impairment.

Hound Labs, Inc. in Oakland, California developed the Hound cannabis breathalyser, which can quantify the amount of THC in the breath from recent cannabis use, according to the company’s product information (Hound Labs, 2019). Cannabix Technologies, Inc., based in Canada, states that the breathalyser it is developing will be able to detect cannabis use that occurred up to two or three hours prior to testing (Cannabix Technologies, 2019).

Their device would not measure cannabis consumed in a capsule. While it may be useful to in certain contexts to have a quick, reliable test that can detect recent cannabis inhaled use, the fact remains that THC levels found in the body are not a valid measure of impairment (Downs, 2016).

Employers who are justified in asserting a zero-tolerance policy for any illegal substance use, including cannabis, can use urine, blood, saliva, or breath tests for pre-employment screening and random drug tests, since finding any detectable amount of a drug related compound would represent a violation of that policy. In the majority of cases however, to enhance worker safety, employers should instead use a valid and reliable measure of actual impairment that could result from any number of causes.

DRUID can meet that need. Ideally, employers with workers in safety-sensitive occupations would require their employees to use DRUID at the beginning of their work shift to demonstrate that there is no evidence of impairment. Later, the employees could be required to use the app again within 30 minutes of a randomly chosen time to ensure their continued fitness to work.

DRUID – for road safety
Driving is a complex skill. As noted previously, cannabis use can result in slowed reaction time, reduced hand-eye coordination, poorer balance, and difficulty performing divided-attention tasks, making it more dangerous to drive particularly within an hour or two of consuming the drug (Sewell, Poling, & Sofuoglu, 2009). Even so, cannabis users do not show a greater incidence of traffic crashes (Compton, 2017).

This may be because they compensate for their impairment by driving more cautiously (Sewell et al., 2009), although they still might respond too slowly to a sudden emergency. It should be noted, however, that research has found that the risk from driving under the influence of both alcohol and cannabis is greater than the risk of driving under the influence of either substance alone (Sewell et al., 2009).

Police use the ‘Standardised Field Sobriety Test’ (SFST) to determine if a driver is impaired. The SFST has three parts: the horizontal gaze nystagmus (HGN), walk and turn, and one leg stand tests. The latter is designed to test balance (NHTSA, 2018). About a third of the neurons in the brain are in the cerebellum which controls balance, so disrupted balance due to substance use can be an indication of systemic cognitive and physical impairment.

A study by Papafotiou and colleagues (2005) found that SFST result correctly identified their driving performance as either impaired or not impaired ranged between 65.8% and 76.3% across two THC conditions. Of course, SFSTs are not administered under laboratory conditions, but in the real world by police officers who may deviate from the protocol they were trained. This could happen in a number of ways, e.g., by giving unclear instructions, asking the driver to repeat the walk and turn or one leg stand tests, or requiring additional tasks (e.g., reciting the alphabet backwards, counting backwards from a random number).

For each test, officers are trained to look for specified signs of impairment, recording points for errors. Defence lawyers frequently challenge a SFST result, because poor performance might be due to the driver’s medical condition, a physical limitation that does not impact their driving ability, or their nervousness after being stopped by the police officer.

For these reasons, a recent report from the Center on Media, Crime, and Justice at John Jay College lists DRUID as the only objective measure for determining impairment during a roadside traffic stop (Bitsoli, 2018). Research now underway will compare DRUID impairment scores against driving simulator performance. With this data in hand, establishing the DRUID app as a standard testing protocol will be a possibility for law enforcement agencies and eventual judicial approval.

Summary
The DRUID app is an innovative approach for assessing impairment, with the potential for reducing the number of traffic crashes and worksite accidents due to alcohol, cannabis, or other drug use or to any other causes of impairment. At a time when medical and recreational cannabis use has become legal in many jurisdictions, the inherent shortcomings of urine, blood, saliva, and breathalyser tests and the SFST establish the basis for DRUID emerging as an accepted best practice for assessing impairment.

References
  1. Bitsoli, S. (2018). Do we need roadside marijuana tests? The Crime Report, November 21, 20018. Accessed on September 15, 2019 at https://thecrimereport.org/2018/11/21/do-we-need-roadside-marijuana-tests/.
  2. Bondallaz, P., Favrat, B., Chtioui, H., Fornari, E., Maeder, P., & Giroud, C. (2016). Cannabis and its effect on driving skills. Forensic Science International, 268: 92-102
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Co-Authors
Michael Milburn PhD and William DeJong PhD
If you wish to reference this article, please use the following format:
Milburn, M. A., & DeJong, W. (2019). A Paradigm Shift in Impairment Testing for Cannabis: The DRUID® App.
 
my primary vape to use while driving
More ammo for the anti legalisation brigade, surely you can have a 1 hour or whatever T break, how could you text at the same time?
 
More ammo for the anti legalisation brigade, surely you can have a 1 hour or whatever T break, how could you text at the same time?
Probably the same way people eat, drink or light and smoke cigarettes...
Texting is fucked for safety

I do vape however at times while driving
Not a big ol dab type thing but a cap in the edge is fine

You can have a beer or two and legally drive.... And once upon a time you could do it at the same time

All about impairment
I reckon stoned driving is much safer than drink driving even if under the limit

EDIT
more strayan revenue raising here
One thing stopping drivers use the phone
Losing points for the passenger though

They should ban billboards on side of the road too then
They are big distractions

 
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More ammo for the anti legalisation brigade, surely you can have a 1 hour or whatever T break, how could you text at the same time?
Vaping does not impair my driving. I am conscience of my safety and that's why I'm opting for a fully automatic vape to replace the fully automatic vape I have now. Now, using a torch, or something you have to stir, while driving, that is definitely not good. Trust me, I drive a long ways every day, with lots of traffic, and if it were not for being able to vape on the freeway, surely I would have snapped and strangled someone by now!
Also, if we have to fear this douche brigade you speak of on our forum, then I vote we go private. :nod:

I reckon stoned driving is much safer than drink driving even if under the limit

Most definitely. I have experience with both, and you are better off with a vape than a drink.

@Shredder and @felvapes thank you for the useful information on the Edge, I am definitely in the market for one of these very soon. I don't use my portable vapes with bongs all that often, but it's good to know that the Edge will be ready!
 
Vaping does not impair my driving. I am conscience of my safety and that's why I'm opting for a fully automatic vape to replace the fully automatic vape I have now. Now, using a torch, or something you have to stir, while driving, that is definitely not good. Trust me, I drive a long ways every day, with lots of traffic, and if it were not for being able to vape on the freeway, surely I would have snapped and strangled someone by now!
Also, if we have to fear this douche brigade you speak of on our forum, then I vote we go private. :nod:



Most definitely. I have experience with both, and you are better off with a vape than a drink.

@Shredder and @felvapes thank you for the useful information on the Edge, I am definitely in the market for one of these very soon. I don't use my portable vapes with bongs all that often, but it's good to know that the Edge will be ready!
The edge is quite a capable beast on the bong
I enjoy an edge through water
Glad you found the info useful
 
Also, if we have to fear this douche brigade you speak of on our forum, then I vote we go private. :nod:

I was not talking about negatives here, that is the fun with forums, differing views. I meant the legislator noisemakers, I try to never drive as I would always have THC in my blood. If I was in an accident, even if not at fault, I would be the guilty party due to having hooch in my system (even if it was from the day or week before)
 

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