The Political Pot Thread

[runawayjimbo]

Maine is super decriminalized for possession.  It is a citation (same as a speeding ticket) for 2 oz or under.  For medical it is a little more strict for conditions than California, but I know a ton of people with cards.  There are care givers who can grow for up to 10 patients I believe and also 1 dispensary in every county.  If you have a card your can grow up to 6 plants too I think.

Any penalty for driving while stoned?

[Undermind]

Maine is super decriminalized for possession.  It is a citation (same as a speeding ticket) for 2 oz or under.  For medical it is a little more strict for conditions than California, but I know a ton of people with cards.  There are care givers who can grow for up to 10 patients I believe and also 1 dispensary in every county.  If you have a card your can grow up to 6 plants too I think.

Any penalty for driving while stoned?

not sure, DUI?

[runawayjimbo]

Maine is super decriminalized for possession.  It is a citation (same as a speeding ticket) for 2 oz or under.  For medical it is a little more strict for conditions than California, but I know a ton of people with cards.  There are care givers who can grow for up to 10 patients I believe and also 1 dispensary in every county.  If you have a card your can grow up to 6 plants too I think.

Any penalty for driving while stoned?

not sure, DUI?

But no formal limit/blood or other detection test?

[Undermind]

Maine is super decriminalized for possession.  It is a citation (same as a speeding ticket) for 2 oz or under.  For medical it is a little more strict for conditions than California, but I know a ton of people with cards.  There are care givers who can grow for up to 10 patients I believe and also 1 dispensary in every county.  If you have a card your can grow up to 6 plants too I think.

Any penalty for driving while stoned?

not sure, DUI?

But no formal limit/blood or other detection test?

no

[emay]

DUID law is going to pass in CO any day. They were trying to get it as a 5 ng limit of THC means your intoxicated, but after research they found out a lot of everyday smokers watch up with 2-3 times that amount, before they even smoke for the first time in a day. So, seems like this law has a lot of grey areas that the police will use against a lot of people that blaze and drive. Wonder how it will turn out.

http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2013/05/thc_driving_limit_passes_william_breathes.php

That's what really scares me about legalization.  The current laws in Maine work well for me and the price/quality is amazing here.  I do however think prohibition is ridiculous and a giant waste of money.

agreed. Since the state/police cant make money busting people for possession anymore, they need to make money off this legalization somehow.
I agree they need some sort of laws against driving stoned, even though its not as bad as driving drunk, but still makes sense to have a law with some sort of limits to driving stoned. But I feel like they just threw this random law together with no studies/research and expect it to not really affect people but the cops in CO I bet are going to have a field day with this. If the average stoner wakes up and has twice the "legal" limit of thc in his blood without even puffing, then obviously this arbitrary number they chose for ng/ml is not right and they need to reconsider this law but instead they just let it go through.

[antelope19]

The only thing that ever happened to me (admittedly, very fortunate) while driving stoned was a friend looked over at me and realized " Dude, you're going 15 mph"  :hereitisyousentimentalbastard Speed limit was 40.

We were on a small, 4 lane road with little to no traffic, so it wasn't that big of a deal.  Just really funny at the time.

[VDB]

Let me take up to contrary position here, just for shits n grins.

There have been plenty of times when I've gotten wasted at night and could tell when I woke up the next day I was not sober. Easily could have been over the legal driving limit then, even though I'd not even "had my first drink of the day."

So, could it not be possible that the heavy stoner who wakes up above the legal limit is still above a reasonable threshold as in my example above?

Or is the story here not that it's just unfair to hold stoners to this standard, but that it's plain impossible for even a heavy smoker to still be too high to drive in the morning (if he hadn't smoked since the night before), and that's why the limit is too low?

[emay]

Let me take up to contrary position here, just for shits n grins.

There have been plenty of times when I've gotten wasted at night and could tell when I woke up the next day I was not sober. Easily could have been over the legal driving limit then, even though I'd not even "had my first drink of the day."

So, could it not be possible that the heavy stoner who wakes up above the legal limit is still above a reasonable threshold as in my example above?

Or is the story here not that it's just unfair to hold stoners to this standard, but that it's plain impossible for even a heavy smoker to still be too high to drive in the morning (if he hadn't smoked since the night before), and that's why the limit is too low?

Yeah I guess thats a good way to put it, if an alcoholic that drinks everday wakes up and already is blowing a .05 or something without even having a first drink of the day, would technically get a DUI or whatever. I just think the way alcohol impairs your ability to drive is a lot different than being impaired by smoking herb.

Also, the way THC lingers in your blood, is also why this threshold is hard to establish. I seriously believe that you can wake up and feel completely sober, after blazing a bunch the night before, and get in a car and if you get pulled and they make you do the blood test the results would come back saying you were "impaired". When you feel and are acting sober.
Waking up after a long night of lots of drinking, you can feel it and sense that your not completely sober and that your still a little drunk.

[DoW]

Here's the problem with reading threads like this.  You are taking the drinking examples to the extreme and using moderate smoking examples to make your point that smoking is better than drinking.
Imo, either activity is fine in moderation.  Yes, pot should be legal and I'd support that action.  But the use of all the analogies to drinking is what upsets me about the whole movement. 
There are plenty of people who can go out and drink moderately daily or weekly or whenever and be fine to drive home that night and be fine to drive the next morning.  Yes, people can smoke at night and operate fine the next day too.  I get that.  But there is no need to use the extreme examples of people drinking in excess and still being drunk the next morning.

Sorry for the rant but the comparisons have always upset me and feel irrelevant to me why marijuana should be legal.  From my perspective (which means nothing in the scheme of things), tell me why marijuana use is ok, not why alcohol use is bad.

/end rant (and don't pick on me this time blat  :wink: )

[PIE-GUY]

The real problem is that the liver processes alcohol at a predictable rate and the BAC used to calculate impairment is actually a good predictor of your ability to drive in a safe manner. THC is stored in your fat cells and appears in your blood well past it's affect on your brain. Therefore, THC levels in blood are NOT a good predictor of your ability to drive in a safe manner. The affect of a law that does not account for this discrepancy is to make smoking regularly illegal... Driving while under the influence should be illegal... THC remains in your blood well after you are under it's influence. It's that simple.

[sophist]

honestly, you guys are doing this wrong.  You drop acid so that fear tingling down your spine sobers you up enough to drive home before the real shit storm hits. 

[emay]

yeah I agree smoking and drinking are two completely different things. But they are trying to mimic a DUI law, for weed, thats where the two get compared in this case. Which is also why its hard to come up with a solid law/limit to smoke.

[VDB]

The real problem is that the liver processes alcohol at a predictable rate and the BAC used to calculate impairment is actually a good predictor of your ability to drive in a safe manner. THC is stored in your fat cells and appears in your blood well past it's affect on your brain. Therefore, THC levels in blood are NOT a good predictor of your ability to drive in a safe manner. The affect of a law that does not account for this discrepancy is to make smoking regularly illegal... Driving while under the influence should be illegal... THC remains in your blood well after you are under it's influence. It's that simple.

Thank you PG, the existence of such a distinction is what I was fishing for. And juxtaposing that with the possibility of whether someone could smoke so much the night before that he's legitimately too high to drive the next morning, and not just by some ill-conceived DUI-ish standard. (I'm not offering a position on that, just posing a question.) Remember, this all began by someone pointing out that the standard being proposed could conceivably restrict someone from driving who hadn't smoked yet that day. So, DoW, I do think it's a relevant part of this discussion if only to dispense with it definitively as a real concern, if in fact that's the case.

[DoW]

I still don't entirely agree but I concede so as not to argue. 

[emay]

IL gettin that medical!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-illinois-senate-votes-medical-marijuana-20130517,0,5344892.story