THC can remain in your system and be detected for 30 days. You are effectively proposing that it should be illegal to drive if you have ever used a THC product in the past month

Not sure I understand what you're saying.

* THC threshold for a first-time user to register as "completely stoned": $foo

* THC level of someone who smoked the maximum amount they could 30 days ago, and hasn't smoked or eaten an edible since: $bar

Are you saying that $bar >= $foo?

The degree to which any given dose of THC affects an individual varies so wildly as to be completely useless as a baseline. To guarantee that 100% of debilitated users are detected, the threshold would have to be so low as to also detect a heavy user who smoked a joint two days ago.

Your argument is built on the supposition that there's a hard lower boundary on debilitating dosage. There is no such magic number, or it is nearly indistinguishable from zero.

It's sort of shocking. Compared to alcohol, where someone might plausibly get as drunk off of 1 drink as someone else might from 5, with THC the plausible ratio is more like 1:50 between naive and heavy users (IME).

That's the way it was in my state until it was overturned on appeal, and they only did that due to an accident of the way weed was legalized.

That’s what Germany does (roughly)

>"Phosphatidylethanol (PEth) is a direct marker, formed only in the presence of ethanol, and can detect heavy or binge drinking for up to 4 weeks after consumption."

We should simultaneously use this marker to prove drunk driving instead of the clearly outdated direct measurements.

Totally agree.

If we’re going to be this cruel it only makes sense to apply the same penalty to using a smartphone while driving, since it results in the same level of reaction time impairment as DWI.

I take issue with calling it "cruel". But yeah we should have really strict penalties on using smartphones while driving.

I wonder at what age the typical person has reached this impairment threshold just by normal mental decline.

>So until we have more research, we legislate to the case of the "first-time user completely stoned," no?

Throwing everyone under the bus because of the lowest common denominator is a shitty thing to do when we're talking $10k+ life altering fines here, but your attitude is how everything else involving driving is done so you'll probably get your way even if it's not moral or right.

INB4 people call me a stoner, haven't smoked weed in decades.

You say it's "not moral or right"; so, what would you suggest? I agree applying the lowest common denominator is not necessarily the best (nor fair) way to do it; but, how do you handle it?

Do we agree that there is some level that effects everyone, even if that level is different? Do we require all THC users -- smoking, edibles, vaping, topicals, etc -- be tested to determine the level where they become impaired?

Or, lacking evidence, punish people based on fault and liability that is defined.

Speeding is speeding, causing a crash is causing a crash.

Doing nothing is a perfectly valid option too. We don't have to react to and legislate every single thing.

Those aren’t the only consequences for DWI

No. What ought to be done is impairment testing, which is the direct way of checking if a driver is safe to drive regardless of the source of impairment.

The police cars should have a driving simulator installed that works with the steering wheel and the pedals of the car. Have suspects do on the spot a driving test in the sim. Pass/fail should be deterministic (the game would determine it).

Lmao that’s actually kinda awesome.

I suck at driving computer games, I would definitely fail on my first few tries.

This is a good point. Because we know that the THC level in somebody’s blood is so bad an indicator that it’s completely useless, we should use that measure to put the maximum number of people in jail with it for the maximum amount of time.

Once we have self-driving cars widely available, sure.