Washington medical marijuana patients have a big decision coming next year. T
hat decision comes in the form of New Approach Washington (NAW) – a legalization initiative that has prominent backers, plentiful funding, and an excellent shot at the ballot.
“So what’s to decide,” you may be thinking. “I favor legalization. Patients will never be safe in their homes until cannabis is legal for everyone. It seems a pretty obvious ‘Yes’ vote to me”.
Trouble is, it’s a little more complicated than that. As is usual in life we’re being asked to give up some things to get other things, and some of the things we’re being asked to give up shouldn’t ever have been put on the table in the first place.
Driven heavily by polling and focus groups, NAW’s language is the way it is because its backers – including the Washington state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) – don’t want their initiative to fail. What they’ve done is include provisions designed to make “marijuana legalization” more palatable to mainstream voters. They want to make the specter of legal pot non-threatening enough so that soccer moms and suburban dads won’t vote a kneejerk “no” on it.
That’s a valid enough idea on the face of it. But they’ve unwisely included a Driving Under the Influence (DUI) provision that is not at all based on science.
NAW’s proposed blood limit of five nanograms per milliliter of active tetrahydrocannabinol (5 ng/ml THC) is unrealistic, and worse than useless – it would effectively criminalize driving by most patients, even when they’re completely unimpaired by cannabis.
If NAW passes, 5 ng/ml of active THC will be defacto DUI. But more than a year before Washington’s voters will decide the issue – if it qualifies for the ballot, as is likely – there are already horror stories.
For instance, there’s the story of a Skagit County grower who shall remain nameless. She was stopped for a taillight being out, after a day spent trimming her crop.
Naturally, she reeked of fresh cannabis, so the cop accused her of driving under the influence. A Drug Recognition Expert who was called to the scene later told her lawyer that she had not been impaired, and he would not have taken her in for a blood draw.
But the first officer on the scene insisted on a test. She tested at 18.5 ng/ml active THC, about 1.5 to 2 hours after the initial traffic stop, due to processing at the scene. She had to pay a lawyer $5,000 so that she could take a plea bargain – admitting guilt, which she didn’t want to do – because she said her lawyer had threatened to drop her case if she took it to trial.
Her 18.5 active THC reading was just the background level from being a patient. The only reason she reeked of marijuana was that she’d been trimming her flowers. Her inactive readings were above 70 ng/ml, which incidentally discredits the popular truism that active THC is fully half of inactive levels.
If our unnamed Skagit County grower had taken her case to trial, she would at least have stood a chance of clearing her name. She was not, in fact, impaired; she just smelled like fresh marijuana. But if NAW passes, every single time any patient or recreational user gets pulled over and the cop decides, for any reason, that he or she suspects they are under the influence – or maybe they just decide to hassle you – any reading 5 ng/ml or over will get you a criminal record, a hefty fine, and possibly jail time after repeated infractions.
That’s a high price to pay for a decrim measure that only covers up to an ounce. Think about it. Almost every time, the fine would have been less for possession of the ounce of pot before NAW than it will be for driving if NAW passes.
Even without considering the other major drawbacks of NAW – chiefly among them, the zero tolerance for drivers under 21 and the prohibition on home growing.
Zero tolerance under 21 means that minor drivers caught with ANY amount of THC in their bloodstream will be charged with DUI. If a teen is sitting across the room from someone who smokes a joint, they could conceivably catch a DUI charge.
If that kind of legislation is to protect the youth, who’s going to protect them from their protectors?
The prohibition on home growing, while it wouldn’t affect the ability of medicinal cannabis users to grow 15 plants, is very unfortunate in that it would force all recreational users to buy from state-licensed stores which may or may not have marijuana of acceptable quality.
Sure, it pays to be a political realist and to be willing to horse-trade when it comes to legislation. But when I see these glaring flaws in NAW, part of being a political realist is knowing a bad trade when you see one.
-Steve Elliott – Founding Editor, TokeoftheTown.com and author of Seattle Weekly’s Toke Signals column.
