Pubdate: Sun, 03 Mar 2013
Source: Arizona Republic (Phoenix, AZ)
Copyright: 2013 The Arizona Republic
Contact: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/sendaletter.html
Website: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/24
Author: E.J. Montini
Page: B1

ARIZ.'S POT DUI LAW A CASE OF IMPAIRED LOGIC

What if you could get a DUI in Arizona for having had a few drinks 
two weeks ago? Crazy, right? Except it's happening. Not with alcohol, 
but with marijuana.

Arizona drivers are going to jail, paying big fines and losing their 
licenses after having gotten DUI citations when blood tests prove 
they were high.

"It makes no sense," said attorney Michael Alarid III, who is 
representing a man charged under current law. "But this is how 
prosecutors and the courts are interpreting the law. And the 
Legislature doesn't appear to want to change it. So we're hoping we 
can get the issue before the state Supreme Court."

How could a person who is not high get busted for DUI?

It happens when science meets politics.

Blood tests now can detect two important chemical compounds in 
marijuana. One of them makes a person high and lasts for hours. The 
other is inactive but can linger in a person's system for up to a month.

In Arizona, state law says if you have either of these compounds in 
your blood, you are guilty of a DUI.

"As things stand, a person from Arizona could go on a snowboarding 
trip to Colorado or Washington state, where marijuana is legal for 
recreational use," Alarid said. "And then a month later he could be 
driving in Arizona, get stopped and be convicted of DUI."

Not long ago, the state Court of Appeals upheld Arizona's law, which 
says if any "metabolite" of a drug like marijuana is found in a 
person's blood, he is guilty of DUI. There are about a dozen states 
with the same standard.

Alarid got a lower court to dismiss the original charges against his 
client after it was shown that the marijuana chemicals found in his 
client's blood were inactive. The Appeals Court overturned it. the 
Appeals Court said, "We determined that the legislative ban extends 
to all substances, whether capable of causing impairment or not."

Apparently, there is no statute in Arizona outlawing impaired logic. 
(And yes, I'm aware that my continued employment proves it.)

The case is being prosecuted by the Maricopa County Attorney's 
Office. I asked County Attorney Bill Montgomery if he believes it is 
appropriate to convict people of DUI when the only marijuana 
metabolite in their blood did not cause impairment.

He responded, "The Court of Appeals decision is unremarkable in light 
of consistent case law on the issue of proscribing driving with a 
prohibited drug or its metabolite in a driver's system."

Since that didn't answer my question, I tried again, asking if 
Montgomery would favor amending state law to differentiate between 
metabolites that cause impairment and those that do not.

He responded, "No. We do not want to create an incentive to 'game' 
how long it takes for any given metabolite to leave a driver's 
system. Nice try, Ed."

It isn't a game. It's chemistry.

Some states at least try to acknowledge the science. In Washington, 
for example, a person is considered impaired if a blood test shows 
5.0 nanograms of marijuana's active ingredient. That level has been 
compared to a .08 percent limit for alcohol.

"An alcohol DUI in Arizona gets your license suspended for 90 days," 
Alarid said. "After 30 days, you can drive to work and school. On the 
other hand, a drug-related DUI, like marijuana, gets you the same 
fines and jail time but revokes your license for a year. That means a 
person who wasn't impaired could be punished more harshly than 
someone who was."

Alarid is hoping the Arizona Supreme Court will take his case.

"In addition to the fairness issue, this doesn't seem right in a 
state where citizens passed a medical-marijuana law," Alarid said. 
"It really puts an unfair burden on those patients."

The risk of getting busted for a DUI charge when they are not 
impaired might cause some medical-marijuana patients not to use the 
drug, no matter how much it helps.

Of course, it's probably just a coincidence that the politicians who 
could revise the DUI statute hate the medical marijuana law. As does 
the county attorney.

Coincidence. Yeah, that must be it.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom