Articles Posted in Medical Marijuana and DUI

We all knew that the Fourth of July holiday weekend was going to be a busy one for law enforcement officials in Los Angeles, who had planned a blitz of sobriety checkpoints and wolfpack patrols throughout the long weekend, mostly in an effort to nab intoxicated drivers.

However, our Los Angeles Marijuana DUI Defense Lawyers were a bit surprised to learn just how many of these arrests were made.

In an astonishing one-year leap, authorities arrested 43 percent more people during the 48-hour period from midnight Thursday, July 4, to midnight Saturday, July 6 than they did during the same time frame last year. In total, 490 individuals were arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs this holiday. Last year, it was 343.

Between June 29 and July 8, the total number of DUI arrests topped nearly 1,200.

We’re expecting this year’s figures may actually be a bit higher because they were provisional, with some precincts having yet to report their totals.

We don’t know exactly how many of those cases were related to marijuana, as opposed to alcohol or other substances, because police don’t classify DUIs this way. What we do know is that over Memorial Day weekend, officers had made it a special point to target those who were driving under the influence of marijuana.

There was also a recent statewide survey, released by the California Office of Traffic Safety, that found more drivers are reportedly under the influence of drugs than alcohol. The survey found one i every seven nighttime drivers was under the influence of drugs that can impact driving, which is nearly twice the number believed to be under the influence of alcohol. This is primarily driven by the widespread increase in recent years of prescription drug use and abuse.

We also know that California is No. 1 in the country for the most sobriety checkpoints conducted annually, according to the state traffic safety office. This is in spite of the fact that in recent years, the state has seen historically low DUI fatalities.

The Los Angeles Police Department underscored the fact that summer is the deadliest time of year on our state’s roads and that the Fourth of July in particular is especially dangerous for motorists.

We accept that police have a vested interest in keeping the roadways safe, and we discourage driving while intoxicated for obvious safety reasons. However, it’s worth noting that the issue of driving under the influence of marijuana is very different from intoxication by alcohol.

While alcohol has a very specific set of standards for determining intoxication levels (breathalyzer readings, blood-alcohol tests, sobriety tests), the determination for marijuana intoxication is much more subjective. It’s often up to the officer to guess whether you might be under the influence, based on field sobriety tests and perhaps the presence of the drug in your blood stream.

However, many people in the state of California use the drug legally for medicinal purposes. Unlike alcohol, THC, the active compound in marijuana, will remain in one’s system for days or even weeks after consumption, which means its mere presence doesn’t equal intoxication.

Some states have begun adopting certain thresholds to indicate marijuana intoxication. For example, Washington state recently passed a measure indicating that anyone with THC measuring 5 nanograms or more is legally under the influence.

There are plenty of scientific and legal resources to refute this theory, of course, but California hasn’t adopted this threshold – as of yet.
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Back when California first passed a measure legalizing the production and use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, providing a venue for people to access the drug typically only cost a few thousand dollars and some gardening equipment.

However, our Los Angeles marijuana lawyers have known for some time that the industry is becoming more and more elite, with the ability to sustain operations typically only held by wealthy entrepreneurs.

It’s interesting that the ideology that has driven us here was the same that was so against the profit-making aspect of marijuana sales. State law prohibits facilities from being for-profit. But in the federal government’s aggressive, blind crackdown on virtually every marijuana dispensary in the state, it has given birth to a situation where the only ones who can afford to thrive are the ones who make money – or had a lot of it prior to entering the industry.

But even in states that only recently legalized the drug, officials have been setting forth mandates that large amounts of capital have to be set aside by the dispensary operator before the venture ever launches. Licensing processes are frequently drawn out in California’s neighboring states, which means investing in both experienced marijuana attorneys and consultants is a must.

One Colorado dispensary owner noted that five years ago, he established his operation with just a half a pound of marijuana and $4,000. Today, it’s likely to take more than that. In some places, dispensary owners and operators are advised to have something like $2 million before they even consider wading into this field. State fees and permitting processes in some regions will top as much as $100,000. But on top of that, there is a merit-based licensing process in many newly green states (which have capped maximum dispensary numbers) that tends to favor wealthier operators who can show they have more than enough money to maintain a sufficient supply of marijuana.

For example, in Arizona, the state has authorized just 98 medical marijuana dispensary licenses throughout the entire state. Applicants with any hope of competing for one of those spots have to prove they have a minimum of $150,000 in capital set aside.

So what we’re seeing is that the people who are entering the field are not farmers or health care providers. In fact, most have no experience whatsoever in running a health care venture. Instead, owners are purported to be owners of real estate companies, cellphone stores and car dealerships.

This is in stark contrast to the way it started back in California. Back then, the majority of those who were interested in opening up shop were legalization activists and farmers. Now, what we’re finding is that it’s becoming less and less common for those becoming involved in the medical marijuana movement to even care much for marijuana, per se. Rather, it’s viewed as an investment.

One newly-minted dispensary owner in Arizona said he and his business partners have a ballpark of 30 businesses between them.

“We saw this as a good avenue to expand as a business plan,” he told a Huffington Post reporter. “Nothing more.”

This is certainly not to say these individuals can’t operate a well-run dispensary that would provide a valuable service to the greater community at-large. But it does mark a shift for which the federal crackdown influence is undeniable.
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Medical marijuana patients in California have long suffered bouts of harassment in their commutes to and from work or the doctor’s office or their children’s school, with officers asserting that simply smelling of the plant or having traces of it in one’s system could amount to impaired driving.

Our Los Angeles marijuana lawyers are committed to fighting for the rights of these patients, who should not suffer any greater scrutiny than someone taking any other kind of prescribed medicine.

A recent case out of Connecticut involved a Rhode Island state representative who was reportedly charged with DUI and marijuana possession after being stopped at a checkpoint. He had a legal prescription for the drug in his native state for pain related to his pancreatitis, though the drug is not considered legal in Connecticut.

The officer who stopped him reportedly suspected he was also under the influence of alcohol. However, both breathalyzer and later urine test samples revealed his blood alcohol level to be far under the legal limit for a DUI charge. His urine test did, however, reveal traces of marijuana. The officer, after speaking with a local prosecutor, determined that the presence of the two substances combined should be enough to warrant pressing charges.

However, the charge was later dropped on a technicality regarding the timing of the urine test. (It should have been conducted within a certain time frame, and it was not.)

But the case poses another interesting point: Were Connecticut prosecutors surmising that medical marijuana users should inherently be subjected to a different set of DUI laws? They were using the fact that the combination alone amounted to intoxication, but this was not based on any scientific fact. We can be assured, however, that prosecutors in other locations will likely at some point attempt the same.

When we look at this a bit more closely, the whole premise is absurd, especially because we understand the differences between the way the human body processes marijuana versus the way it processes alcohol. Blood alcohol measurements, such as breathalzyers or blood tests, may be effective in determining intoxication because alcohol remains in the system a very short time. So the presence of alcohol above a certain level at any point in time is going to indicate intoxication or impairment.

Marijuana, however, is different. While there is no set measure for marijuana intoxication in California (as there is now currently in Washington State, where it has been set at 5 nanometers of TCH per milligram of blood content), the presence alone of marijuana should not be misconstrued as a clear sign of intoxication. That’s because unlike alcohol, marijuana can remain in the system for days or even weeks after use. The rate at which a person processes the drug may have more to do with their own metabolism than how recently it was consumed. Further, an individual who consumes a great deal of marijuana on a regular basis, as prescribed, may have extremely high levels of THC in their system, but that is not necessarily indicative of intoxication – only of regular use.

So the standard applied in the Connecticut case is troubling, even if it was later tossed on a technicality.

California Vehicle Code 23152(a) specifically addresses DUI marijuana in this state, though it leaves much to officer interpretation. It requires that an officer make a determination that you are impaired to a degree that you no longer have the ability to drive with the caution that would be exhibited by a person who is sober. Usually, that will rely heavily upon your pattern of driving, your physical appearance, your performance in any field sobriety tests and chemical testing, such as a urine or blood sample.

If you have been arrested for marijuana DUI in Los Angeles, call us today.
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Latching on to the questionable results of a recent national study indicating drugged drivers are an increasing problem, local and state law enforcement officials are teaming up to target medical marijuana DUI in Orange County and across the state.

As our Orange County medical marijuana attorneys understand it, the federal government is funding a program called Advanced Roadside Impaired Driving Enforcement, which will train some 700 officers across the state on how to recognize a driver who is under the influence of drugs without the hassle of an expensive toxicology test. Right now, California has more than 1,000 officers who are classified as “drug recognition experts,” which is more than any other state.

Across the country, the U.S. government hopes to train some 6,000 officers in 46 states.

A new government report makes the overreaching claim that drugs are involved in an increasing number of traffic fatalities across the country.

Our Orange County medical marijuana lawyers reported on our Marijuana Lawyer Blog recently that in states where medical marijuana is used, there are fewer traffic fatalities.

Medical marijuana advocates say that this is true because fewer people are drinking alcohol and then driving to cope with their illness. If they legally can use marijuana, they are doing it at home and not in public where they could be arrested and therefore have no reason to drive. Those who oppose medical marijuana in Orange County, however, would argue that this means that younger people, who typically drink beer, are able to get marijuana more easily in states that allow it for medicinal purposes.

This also leads to questions about medical marijuana DUI charges in Orange County. Because there is always going to be scrutiny about medical marijuana in California, there is always going to be the possibility that drivers who are under the influence of medical marijuana will be charged with a DUI.

Officials state that the number of people being charged with prescription drug DUI is on the rise because of an increase in prescription drug abuse. But what these people don’t report is that police are woefully unprepared and under-trained in their ability to properly recognize whether a person is driving under the influence of marijuana.

Some believe that less than 1/10 of 1 percent of all law enforcement officers worldwide are trained as drug recognition experts. That’s fewer than 5,000 officers in the entire world who have the training to detect when a person is under the influence of drugs.

Every law enforcement officer gets months of training to figure out when a person has been driving under the influence of alcohol, but many don’t get any type of training on how to determine if a person has been driving after taking drugs.

Also, there are so many kinds of drugs and all have different effects on a person. The individual themselves, including their body type and physical and mental makeup, can also alter how the drug affects them. So, it can be very tough to tell when a person is under the influence of a drug.

When that drug is medical marijuana, the picture becomes even hazier. If a person is in pain and has a prescription to legally use that drug to cope with the pain, what’s to stop them from driving? If there is no warning label that tells them they shouldn’t drive within a certain time frame of taking the drug, they shouldn’t face the possibility of being arrested.

If a person pops a painkiller to cope with an illness and then drives to work, they usually aren’t bothered. But for some reason, people who use medical marijuana sometimes get harassed by police.

According to the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the DUI arrest rate has continued dropping for years. According to data from 1997 to 2007, the rate dropped from 933 to 863 per 100,000 residents.

The department reports that drug-involved fatalities have increased substantially as well as drug-involved accidents. But the department’s stat sheet doesn’t provide information about medical marijuana cases specifically.

That could be because there are few cases where officers can actually prove a person is under the influence of drugs while driving. A breathalyzer machine isn’t going to be helpful because those are designed to indicate a blood-alcohol level. Field sobriety tests can often be thwarted by a person’s medical condition or weather and road factors.

The bottom line is that if someone is charged with a medical marijuana DUI, they should immediately call an experienced Orange County medical marijuana lawyer in order to get the legal representation they need. Many DUI lawyers may not know the medical marijuana laws well enough to properly represent a person in this situation.
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