There’s no national standard for cannabis impairment like there is with alcohol. But that could soon, albeit slowly and incrementally, change. Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which contains language aimed at combating impaired driving, including cannabis-impaired driving. Specifically, the bill calls for a report that “identifies, and contains recommendations for addressing, Federal statutory and regulatory barriers to — (A) the conduct of scientific research on marijuana-impaired driving; and (B) the establishment of a national clearinghouse for purposes of facilitating research on marijuana-impaired driving.” Amid federal prohibition, and therefore without federal guidance, nearly half the states in the country have passed adult-use legalization laws. As a result, lawmakers, policymakers, and regulators have taken a patchwork of approaches to curb and preventing cannabis-impaired driving. Washington State, for example, looks at blood, while most other states rely on members of law enforcement to detect impairment, known as Drug Recognition Experts, or DREs. Both methods are problematic.
Alyson Martin, Cannabis Wire, 11/09/2021 19:00:00