State Bill Would Create THC Limit for Stoned Drivers, but Scientists Say It’s Useless

Most  law enforcement professionals, and biologists agree that blood tests don’t work very well for THC

State Bill Would Create THC Limit for Stoned Drivers, but Scientists Say It’s Useless – Unlike alcohol, which dissolves in blood, THC, the active chemical in marijuana, dissolves in fat, and doesn’t “peak” in the body while you’re actually high. In February, a Columbia University neurobiologist told NPR that it’s “really difficult to document drugged driving in a relevant way.”

Apparently, that news has not reached State Rep. David Silvers, a West Palm Beach Democrat who filed a state house bill yesterday to impose a legal blood-THC limit on Florida drivers.

Florida’s DUI Bill

Unreliable THC Tests

But biologists, however, have long warned that blood tests aren’t very reliable when it comes to pot smoking. Technically, when a person smokes weed, some THC is released into their bloodstream in the next few hours. But the drug’s effects can linger on for more than a few hours, while THC levels in the bloodstream don’t.

There are two huge problems to testing for the compound. For one, THC builds up in the bloodstreams of habitual marijuana users, which means those users could fail blood tests even if they aren’t high.

Also, there are multiple ways to ingest marijuana, and only some of those ways lead to increased blood-THC levels. Edible marijuana, like pot brownies, typically doesn’t lead to increased THC levels in the bloodstream, according to NPR.

Likewise, a 2016 study from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety called similar blood tests “useless” for deducing who’s too stoned to drive. The study said that multiple states already impose the same, five-nanogram limits on drivers — and that the rule is both impossible to police, and has no real effect on driver safety either. According to AAA, people with more than five nanograms of THC in their blood don’t even drive much worse than regular drivers.

In 11 states, you can be arrested for having any THC in your bloodstream while driving: This means some people can be arrested for a DUI despite having not smoked for days or even weeks.

One other, major group that says these bans are useless. The federal National Highway and Traffic Safety Organization says it’s both “inadvisable” and “currently impossible” to track how stoned a person is via their blood-THC levels alone.

Update:

In a phone interview, Silvers said he had not reviewed studies on the efficacy of using a THC blood-test to test driver impairment before filing the bill.

“The bill can always be amended, and that’s what makes this country so great,” he said.

From: Miami News Time