Pubdate: Fri, 03 May 2013 Source: Denver Post (CO) Copyright: 2013 The Denver Post Corp Contact: http://www.denverpost.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122 Author: John Ingold ANOTHER BILL ON STONED DRIVING UNVEILED Colorado lawmakers on Thursday introduced yet another proposal - the sixth in three years-to set a definition of driving while stoned. The new proposal comes amid fears that a stoned-driving limit currently contained in a separate, major bill on recreational marijuana regulations could scuttle that entire bill and undo months of tedious work creating a framework for the forthcoming legal-pot retail industry. "The feeling and thought process in the Senate is that bill, the whole bill, will not pass if this provision is a part of it," House Minority Leader Mark Waller, R-Colorado Springs, said in a committee hearing Thursday in introducing the new bill on stoned driving. The new bill, House Bill 1325, landed on a day when the Colorado legislature was already stretched thin by marijuana. At the same time a House committee was hearing HB 1325, a Senate committee was taking public testimony on the regulations bill - House Bill 1317- and yet another House committee was hearing testimony on a separate, less-contentious bill on rules for recreational marijuana. The Senate Finance Committee ultimately ran out of time on HB 1317 and a bill on marijuana taxes, HB 1318. It will take up both of those bills again Friday. The less-significant rules bill, Senate Bill 283, passed in committee unanimously. So, too, did the new stoned-driving bill. But the Senate has always presented the greater challenge for the idea. The bill sets a limit of active THC- the psychoactive chemical in marijuana - that drivers can have in their blood before juries could presume them to be stoned. Lawmakers in the Senate have killed similar proposals four times in the past three years-including earlier this year, when a bill on stoned driving died in a Senate committee. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom