Arizona Supreme Court DUI Ruling Helps Cannabis Consumers

The Arizona Supreme Court has taken a step towards rational DUI regulations for cannabis use. A crux of the issue has been the fact that the evidence of cannabis consumption can stay in your body for roughly a month, give or take. So, you could smoke a joint on the 1st, get tested on the 25th and you would produce a positive test result that would theoretically be de facto evidence of impaired driving. This is problematic for obvious reasons, even more so for the medical marijuana patients who will invariably test positive every time, regardless of actual impairment.

The top Arizona justices recently ruled that a metabolite of cannabis called carboxy-THC being found in a test result does not constitute impaired driving. Carboxy-THC is the metabolite that stays in the blood for weeks and is not at all psychoactive. Think of it as merely a footprint that shows cannabis had been there within the last month. This is crucial in a state that adheres to a zero-tolerance policy as far as DUI’s and any schedule 1 substance are concerned.

This takes a step in the right direction of only pulling people over who are legitimately impaired. I smoke a lot of cannabis, but I don’t drive impaired. The amount of pot I smoke would certainly produce a positive result on a test and, seeing that I live in Washington state where the law of the land is a blood volume of 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood, I could not smoke for a week and still likely produce well beyond 5 nanograms.

Excerpt from the ruling:

“This interpretation would create criminal liability regardless of how long the metabolite remains in the driver’s system or whether it has any impairing effect. For example, at oral argument the State acknowledged that, under its reading of the statute, if a metabolite could be detected five years after ingesting a proscribed drug, a driver who tested positive for trace elements of a non-impairing substance could be prosecuted…This interpretation would allow the prosecution of an individual who drives after ingesting a legal substance that shares a non-impairing metabolite with a proscribed substance. For example, serotonin, a legal substance, and the proscribed drug bufotenine [a psychedelic found in fly agaric mushrooms and the skin of certain toads] share a common metabolite, 5-hydroxindoleactic acid (“5-HIAA”)….Under the State’s interpretation of “metabolite,” it could prosecute a driver who had 5-HIAA in his or her system after ingesting a legal serotonin supplement or, for that matter, whose blood contains 5-HIAA as a byproduct of naturally produced serotonin.”

We need to take comfort in the fact that things like this are starting to happen. A moderate, middle-path is coming into clarity and, just maybe, we can find our way through this morass of the cannabis unknown with some composure.

I’ll be curious to see if UA’s for job screenings can be held to the same flame. How nice it would be to not have to stop smoking weed for a month prior to trying to work at Target. Good thing alcohol is held to the same scrutiny as cannabis, right?

Cannabis might still be a politically incorrect substance, but at least some of our legal professionals seem to have a reasonable head on their shoulders. I hope my home state of Washington takes a page from this rule book.