The quotes from the volunteers are priceless, especially because I'm imagining they're stoned.
"Yeah, she'd be going to jail," said Rich Armstrong, an officer with Colorado State Patrol. But things weren't so clear with the other volunteers. A lot of the officers had decided they wouldn't arrest Eugene Butler or a volunteer named John (who also asked that we not use his last name); both men aced the same roadside tests Christine flunked, even though they, too, had just smoked a lot in the RV. Yeah. So. The road to my grandparents' house is the most dangerous drunk driving road in the United States. It looks like a graveyard from all the roadside memorials. By the time I'd graduated high school I'd lost two classmates... and maybe a dozen of my classmates had lost siblings or parents to drunk drivers. Just three weeks ago a friend of mine lost her uncle, her aunt, and three cousins to a drunk driver. Meanwhile I commuted 30 miles a day on motorcycle through post-legalization LA and lemme tell ya - enough people are stoned on the 405 that you smell weed from on-ramp to off-ramp. It's like a slow-rolling Phish concert. And I was never even scared. Alcohol predictably fucks up your reflexes and judgement. Weed does not. If you think you can be stoned and drive, because you've been stoned and driven, you're probably right. LA drivers are terrible but I've seen no evidence that they're objectively more terrible on weed. Alcohol? Fuck to the yes. It took me a while to figure out what all the white latex gloves were for. I'd see people driving around like Michael Jackson and couldn't figure it out. Then I realized that if you smoke a joint with only that hand and jettison the glove and roach when you get pulled over, they can't bust you for paraphernalia. They can't bust you for possession. They can only bust you for what you do, not what you have, which means unless they feel like fighting you over a field sobriety test in court, you're gonna skate. And I'm 100% cool with it.Christine, the officers all decided, would be a danger behind the wheel. In real life, they would have arrested her.
There isn't one. From what I understand about the way ingested cannabinoids are metabolized, there is no way to test for impairment, chemically speaking. The only thing that lab testing can tell you is if metabolites are present. The problem is that metabolite can be detected sometimes after MONTHS of complete sobriety.
Indeed. From the article . . . "And it shocked everyone, including ourselves, that we could measure, in some of these individuals, THC in the blood for 30 days," says Marilyn Huestis, a toxicologist with the University of Maryland School of Medicine who recently retired from leading a lab at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The participants' bodies had built up stores of THC that were continuing to slowly leech out, even though they had abstained from using marijuana for a full month. In some of those who regularly smoked large amounts of pot, researchers could measure blood THC above the 5-nanogram level for several days after they had stopped smoking. Conversely, another study showed that people who weren't regular consumers could smoke a joint right in front of researchers and yet show no evidence of cannabis in their blood. So, in addition to being invasive and cumbersome, the blood test can be misleading and a poor indicator of whatever is happening in the brain.In one study, researchers had 30 frequent marijuana users stay at a research facility for a month without any access to drugs of any sort and repeatedly tested their blood for evidence of cannabis.
Marilyn Huestis doesn't know shit if she is stating that they are measuring 'THC in the blood.' When you test people for cannabis, you test their blood for cannabinoid metabolites, not psychoactive delta-9 THC. I don't actually know if it's possible to test for cannabinoids, considering the body makes them naturally. It's possible that she's 'translating' things a bit for laymen.