UNEQUAL TREATMENT DOES NOT MEAN THE EQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSE HAS BEEN VIOLATED OR IS IN ANY WAY RELEVANT. ONLY UNEQUAL PROTECTION BASED ON CLASSIFICATIONS OF A SUSPECT CLASS THAT HAS FACED HISTORIC DISCRIMINATION SUCH AS RACE, GENDER AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION VIOLATES EQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSE.
EQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSE DID NOT WHEN IT WAS WRITTEN APPLY TO ANYTHING ASIDE FROM RACE BASED CLASSIFICATION (ORIGINAL INTENT). IT DOES NOT, DID NOT, AND WILL NOT EVER APPLY TO POT SMOKERS.
Alright son, and that's my last post on this matter.
The 14th Amendment "accomplished" what the House tried back in the 1790s, to compel the states to respect the Bill of Rights effectively creating dual citizenship. The Senate representing the states rejected the idea back then. Obviously the treatment of freed blacks was ostensibly a priority but that doesn't mean everybody else aint protected (wtf?). Of course pot smokers are protected - they fit the definition in the amendment of someone protected by the Constitution, they're citizens too. You've re-defined citizen to exclude millions of...citizens. And pot smokers aint a "suspect" group and hasn't faced discrimination?
The rest of your argument is an explanation as to why the courts wont protect pot smokers based on some transit authority hiring practice that aint applicable. There was no criminal law involved and addicts weren't being treated differently than alcoholics. Criminal law is involved with driving "impaired" and pot smokers and drinkers aint being treated "equally".
Except, of course, 'we' doesnt mean 'all of us'. Nor are all that you list what i'd actually quantify as 'impairments'.
Which ones aint impairments? Of course "we" means all of us, nobody is "perfekt". That means we drive impaired all the time, its just a matter of how much. Two days ago I drove an animal to the vet, I was concerned for the critter (a distraction) and I'm under the weather and taking meds with a pulled muscle in my upper back that makes driving painful. I've seen better days and I'm rarely close to "perfect". In spite of all that, my impairment was less than a drinker near the legal limit for booze. And I'm still impaired, just getting over the cold and that pulled muscle aint healing very fast - that'll be bothering me for another month probably. Thank God it aint messing up my golf game, but I'm still playing impaired.
Not exactly, as there was an established metabolite level that would rule out second hand exposure. In other words, the test would only pick up levels of the drug that resulted in impairment which meant they were actually high (to varying extent) during the actual test.
I dont understand, the test would show THC from weeks ago proving they were high at the time of the test?
THC is always active in the brain via the THC receptors in the brain as long as it is in the system.
So if you smoke pot today you'll be high for 2-3 weeks? I dont think we agree on what "active" means, I mean the "high" - the impairment. Thats what the law will be dealing with, unless its a zero tolerance policy where mere detection (aside from 2nd hand smoke) "convicts" the user of DUI even if they hadn't smoked in a week.
You may not know this but some states will still charge a person with a DUI even if their BAC is less than .08 if the test were given long after their arrest. They are allowed to estimate their BAC level at the time of the arrest via established science on how to do that. Granted that is only a several hours example of your reference, but it is similar to what you are referring to.
Established science... Have we established in this thread that pot smokers are less likely to crash than drinkers at the legal limit? When I said they were less impaired your rebuttal was they're differently impaired. Okay, then pot smokers are differently impaired than sober drivers and both are safer than drinkers.
This is simply false logic. If driving while high is safe then people will still obviously do so without getting caught for the simple reason the cops need a probable cause to pull you over for a traffic infraction.
Random checkpoints dont require probable cause - (what 4th Amendment?) - and a good nose can detect pot on clothing or upholstery long after it was used.
In other words, if you are right (I dont think you are) then the laws will only be a concern to those so hugely messed up that they should obviously not be driving at all. Which would still make those laws effective albeit to a lesser extent that DUI laws for alcohol.
The laws now are mostly zero tolerance, Washington state's legalization referendum came attached with a 5 nanogram limit. I dont know about medical pot states like California, Colorado's in the process of dealing with the matter.
But some studies show 5 nanograms of active THC per milliliter of whole blood is equivalent to about 0.05 percent blood-alcohol level, less than the state DUI limit for alcohol in Washington and Oregon.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/commuting/2012/12/washingtons_new_driving_high_d.html
So it may be possible to come up with a useful ratio, we aint there yet
Drunk people get pulled over for driving irregularly. Your premise is that pot smokers wont do this. Ergo, pot smokers have nothing to worry about these laws. That is the hole in your argument.
I expect proportionally fewer pot smokers will get pulled over than drinkers - and thats probably buried in some stat pile somewhere, but people are not perfect. That includes pot smokers... Why should a simple infraction for everyone else escalate into the realm of criminality for pot smokers? That isn't proof they're more impaired than other legal drivers. Give them a ticket for the infraction.
I really think there're some really good points in Berzerker's points. There's some parts that I disagree with, but I won't focus too much on them.
So, Berzerker, the main weakness I see with your gist is the insistence on the risk ratio and of the level of impairment. Here's what I mean: I think more extensive studies are warranted and if they continue to show that the impairment (i.e., driving handicap) levels are significantly lower than a BAC of 0.08 at most to all doses of MJ, then having a separate 'cap' on MJ usage doesn't make reasonable sense. That said, holding too hard to the current numbers isn't required for this point to be true. It's going to be tough to convince people that MJ-induced impairment is non-trivial. Without real study, it's hard to get good statistics.
The other really good point is that there's just no real way to test for MJ dosing. Like you say, the metabolite is detectable, even when it's not causing much of an issue. The analogy to alcohol is reasonable. Alcohol's metabolites last a bit longer than the actual impairment, but they (themselves) are metabolised so quickly that it's a non-issue for detection.
In my country, you can have an additional punishment for driving while impaired. Too little sleep, weird drug interactions, whatever. This catch-all very well could be a reasonable way of preventing people from driving while too influenced by MJ. If the driver is driving unsafely, then they can get ticketed and prosecuted without resorting to anti-drug laws.
Thanks Mac, and I agree - overcoming false perceptions is a tall order. In this thread people posted studies claiming pot smokers were nearly 2x more likely to crash without even considering booze and every other impairment under the sun. The bias is against pot...
