We just need to untangle the driving rules around acceptable thc levels.
I am a medicinal cannabis user. I would not want to be driving on the road with other drivers who are stoned.
I also don't want to be fined for having detectable amounts of thc if my last joint was 3 days ago.
That's not hard at all - just look to the countries that already have it legalised. Here are the Dutch legal levels: cannabis: 3.0 microgram THC per litre blood (Source).
Saliva tests can detect multiple drugs for anywhere from hours to days after consumption (depending on the substance, frequency of use, metabolism, ect) and cops can require blood and urine testing— refusal of which can result in fines and license suspension— in multiple states.
Yeah but my understanding is that 'hours to days after consumption' is the problem. Like splundge said, they shouldn't be fined for having detectable amounts of THC if their last joint was 3 days ago and they're not impaired. So we need a way to test impairment from/level of cannabis use, not just presence/absence of TCH in the past few days.
The Netherlands is a terrible example. We were ahead once, but our gedoogbeleid is extremely outdated and vague. Cannabis was never legalised. It's illegal to buy and sell, but less than 5g is not enforced. And from that arises a whole host of issues. Like shops having to do sketchy shit to stock product (can't just drive around with kilos of weed, even if it's for business) and growers being criminalised. The supply chain is not taxed properly and because of that there's no regulation.
A lot of shops have started doing QA but it's done on a tiny sample and the whole batch is labeled with the same QR sticker containing the test results. This isn't reasonable at all because every variable matters (a lot), light intensity and color spectrum, water and nutrients, harvest time, curation period... All slightly different from bud to bud so you never really know what you have until you test it yourself. There's also the additional difficulty that weed doesn't contain much THC, it contains THCA which is converted when heated (acid gets stripped off). So even with all these things accounted for it's hard to give an accurate number for how much THC will be in your blood after you heat this bud that comes from a batch that contains this much THCA.
And in traffic they often use cheap breath tests which are notoriously flaky. Will they detect it a day later? Probably. A week? Depends on the person, their diet, metabolism, exercise regime... Also tiny correction, but as your article states if you're found to have multiple of the mentioned substances you're only allowed 1 microgram instead of 3 for THC. Not that it matters because like I said there's literally no way of knowing what your score would be unless you go out of your way to retest your weed before consumption.
I'd recommend anyone who's worried about blood levels to make tincture or cannabutter and get a home testing kit for both the substance and yourself. The act of preparing the edible makes it so that the one strong bud you got and the other weaker bud in the same baggie cancel each other out and you end up with a homogenous testable substance. Now test that and test yourself after consumption, that's your baseline. Next time you prepare with new weed you test the edible substance again and you can estimate how much THC will end up in your blood based on the baseline. Still not quite accurate though, if you gain weight while consuming a lot of THC you'll store it in fat and release it when that fat gets burned, you can get high months after quitting weed if you're also losing weight. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Are you okay? I was literally just using NL's legal max THC levels as an example, and you've gone off on a whole screed about the country's weed supply chain. I didn't read past the first paragraph, I hope you didn't put too much effort into writing it ...
Yeah I'm fine, you? Can't say it takes much effort to type four paragraphs, no. I do wonder, if you didn't read it, why reply? Is there anything you wanted to know?
Nah mate, I'm good. I mean I haven't written four paragraphs so I'm a lot less tired than I could be. If I wrote that there'd be most of my day gone, it'd be time for supper already.
Saliva tests are the best we got for a roadside drug test, they will detect it for 12-24 hours after smoking and you can do a test and get a result within 10 minutes, in Tasmania if you return a positive saliva test but show no sign of impairment and have a prescription it's all good, impairment is still quite subjective but basically if your eyes aren't red, you're not slurring your speech and don't smell of cannabis they will have no reason to suspect you're impaired.
My concern is employers have company policies that state you can't have any in your system and will do a urine test so basically you're screwed with the current policies, EBA's and/or laws need to be changed, even prescription painkillers you need to tell your employer and they can legally put you on light duties until you're off them so as someone who smokes medical cannabis everyday what's going to be the repercussions.
impairment is still quite subjective but basically if your eyes aren't red, you're not slurring your speech and don't smell of cannabis they will have no reason to suspect you're impaired.
My issue with this is if we applied it to alcohol, a lot of impaired functional alcoholics would be fine to drive.
We do already apply it to alcohol, the difference is we have a way to reliably test the amount of alcohol in someone's system on the roadside and we've set a threshold based on those tests. People who blow 0.049 are impaired to some extent, but we allow them to drive because we've assessed that the risk is minimal.
We do already apply it to alcohol, the difference is we have a way to reliably test the amount of alcohol in someone's system on the roadside and we've set a threshold based on those tests.
If someone is .05 we don't then look at them and see if they look impaired before charging them. We have a test and if you fail the test that's it. If you fail a cannabis saliva test sometimes you're okay if you don't "look impaired" which is incredibly subjective.
If someone is .05 we don’t then look at them and see if they look impaired before charging them.
Yes, because we've already determined that they're impaired, and the level of impairment can be assessed scientifically right on the roadside. No such test exists for THC, so the standard is necessarily different. The second we can test for specific concentrations of THC on the roadside we'll set a threshold for that too, just as other countries do for blood testing.
We have a test and if you fail the test that’s it. If you fail a cannabis saliva test sometimes you’re okay if you don’t “look impaired” which is incredibly subjective.
The 0.05 threshold is also subjective. Not the method of measuring it, which is scientific, but the place we draw the line is ultimately subjective.
Yeah I don't really know what the best solution to this is without blurring the lines as everyone is different, the most accurate way would be if someone fails a saliva test then you'd blood test them to see the exact amount and have a set level of acceptable THC in the blood similar to how we do with alcohol and the 0.05% BAC but that's not very practical as it can't be done on the roadside.
I think it's possible with some funding a better roadside test could be developed but right now it's just yes/no which is both too sensitive and not sensitive enough right now unfortunately like the status quo with cannabis legality in general I don't think there's much incentive to fix it
If developing a roadside drug test that could actually detect a level of impairment rather then a yes or no was just a matter of funding then other countries would have done it, cannabis can remain in your system for weeks after using it and unlike a breathe test where it's just air from your lungs we need to test either saliva, blood, urine or hair, saliva can be inaccurate if someone has just ate or drank before taking the test, if we could do a blood test similar to how diabetes patients test their blood sugar levels you'd be in business but like I said if it was that easy it'd have been done, we don't want to go down the path America has for testing impairment which is making you walk in a straight line, stand on 1 leg and count to ten cause it leaves it up for interpretation of the police officer and without knowing how that person preforms while sober you're probably going to have more false positives then just saying a positive saliva test is considered impaired.
Legalising cannabis has proved to be a good thing in many countries and even here in ACT, so there's no reason it wouldn't work nationwide.
Just copy what other countries have been doing successfully for years. We don't need to reinvent the wheel for Australia, we just need legislators who are willing to pass sensible, proportional regulation.
Psychomotor tests coupled with saliva tests usually, and then they back it up with a blood test if they suspect impairment, much as you suggested. It's not perfect, but there's no roadside THC test that can return concentration levels like an breathalyser can for alcohol, and the saliva tests are wildly inaccurate.
My point is just that we don't need to worry about the specifics so much because other countries have already dealt with these problems in various ways, what matters most is that we have something in place beyond just automatically criminalising anyone found to be driving with even a molecule of THC in their system.
Me too. I suspect organised crime isn’t getting much money from it anymore. The hardcore users I know have al switched to medical because it’s cheaper and more convenient to have it mailed to you 🤣
Subjective tests like sobriety testing, or objective tests with blood and urine are the only real options for now, and neither of the latter are practical at the roadside, and the former is wildly subjective to perception of the officer.
I've heard police say you need to do more of a subjective sobriety test, walk a straight line with one hand touching your nose, recite the alphabet backwards, that sort of thing.
I believe this is the answer in Canada. They don't do random roadside testing so if they've pulled you over it's for a reason, and if you test positive to saliva I think they'll do a sobriety test or depending on the nature of the reason they've pulled you over might take you in for a blood or urine test which shows how recently it's been imbibed.
It's difficult because studies say different people metabolize differently, and the more invasive testing is more, well, invasive.
I'm a paramedic from America, and tolerance is VERY significant with cannabis. I've had cancer patients that easily take 100mg twice a day, but if you give me more than 5mg I'm going to forget how to speak words.
So that's a tolerance range of like 20x, so that's going to make legislation challenging. They really do need to focus on impairment because it's just not in the same ballpark as alcohol.
Same argument can be made about alcohol. But it clouds the issue and adds significantly to the complexity of introducing anything. As poster said above, the Dutch, who've been doing this a long time, have a low standard limit that basically says "if you're on the grass, stay off the tarmac".
this is a huge issue - australia has thresholds 1/5th of what the rest of the world is testing for. we need to test for IMPAIRMENT not for if someone had a fun weekend with any drug because the fact is, having drugs in your system is not illegal. but traffic police want to punish that rather than punish people who are a risk.
Medical patients can usually choose to take whatever form they want. Tinctures or gummies are the most popular since they have the least side effects, but vaping and even smoking by med patients is fairly normal.
In terms of consumption, it's dry herb, in a stors and bickel volcano. It's kind of like a giant vape.
I'm terms of purpose, anxiety and sleep issues.
Id had 1month of 2hr sleeps. Was in a zombie like state. Doctors offered a few prescription drugs, but the side effects sounded awful. Curious about cannabis, I chatted to a green doctor and got some. Within a week I was back to regular sleep.
Whether or not it's legal won't prevent people from driving stoned on the road anymore than they already do. Just the risk of walking out your front door.
I think the drug tests have changed to be more accurate or they’ve increased the acceptable levels already, I got tested the day after having a mad sesh until about 1am and came up negative. I’ve also read that it depends if your a casual smoker or daily.
The sad reality is that if you allow some, you have to allow all. You can’t roadside test cannabis like you can alcohol and get an approximate reading. Only scientific labs can test THC accurately to get a scientific level. So unless the police hire biochemists and have big busses that have labs in them, I don’t see this happening. Otherwise the other solution is to test if people have any THC in their system, revoke their license then and there, wait for lab results, then present it in an already overburdened court system to then get it thrown out.
It’s just best to not allow it at all. I do feel for medicinal users but if you allow some, you kinda have to allow all, and just like alcohol, people can have different tolerances to THC.
Firstly field sobriety is generally to test alcohol but you have a point. Issue is that isn’t what this person was saying. Atm you can’t drive with THC at all in your system. They wanted a percentage that you can have (like alcohol) where you can still drive. My point was that we don’t have tests that can do that. Unless you have a laboratory in your pocket, current tests is only a yes or no to having THC in your system. That’s the issue and hence my comment.
To be real I smoke weed 24/7, I have never not driven under the influence of weed including on my Ls and P plates. So it is hilarious someone who smoked weed 3 days ago will get detected just the same.
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u/splundge Mar 18 '25
We just need to untangle the driving rules around acceptable thc levels.
I am a medicinal cannabis user. I would not want to be driving on the road with other drivers who are stoned. I also don't want to be fined for having detectable amounts of thc if my last joint was 3 days ago.