Category Archives: Drugs

Drugs

Marc Emery Asks Public To Help Imprisoned Drug War POWs

By Marc Emery
Cannabis Culture: May 5, 2014

Dear Friends in the United States,

The US Sentencing Commission has just made a drug sentence amendment referred to as “Drugs Minus 2” that lowers the sentencing guidelines by 2 points, which, for newly sentenced drug offenders, will reduce their sentence by, on average, eleven months, effective on November 1, 2014.

What this amendment doesn’t do is apply retroactively to all currently incarcerated non-violent US drug war prisoners. I need your help in trying to change that.

As you may be aware, US federal penalties for drug offenses are among the most severe and unforgiving in the world. What I need my American friends to do is send a letter to the US SENTENCING COMMISSION and urge them to make this new AMENDMENT retroactive so all currently incarcerated federal non-violent drug prisoners, including those sentenced for marijuana offenses, have some time shaved off their sentences.

As my sentence ends in 2 months, on July 9, I do not benefit by this proposed amendment.

It would be tremendously appreciated by the over 100,000 non-violent drug war prisoners in US federal prisons if compassionate US citizens would write a brief letter to:

The Office of Public Affairs
U.S. Sentencing Commission
One Columbus Circle, N.E.,
Suite 2-500,
Washington, DC, 20002-8002

Please send a letter similar to or exactly as follows:

Re: Retroactive Application of Drug Amendment 3: Drugs Minus-2

Dear Member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission;

I am writing you as a US citizen in favor of the retroactive application of the recent amendment 3; commonly known as Drugs Minus-2 to the federal drug guidelines. I believe the benefit of this amendment should apply to all of the 100,000+ non-violent drug offenders currently incarcerated in US federal prisons, as well as those newly sentenced after November 1, 2014, when the new guidelines will take effect.

The Commission’s data reflects that public safety was not endangered by the retroactive application of the crack cocaine sentencing amendments. I urge you to make a similar decision in regards this amendment’s application also. Moreover, the federal courts have the institutional capacity and experience following the retroactive crack cocaine amendments to handle an influx of sentence reduction motions from incarcerated defendants.

Please make this Amendment retroactive, without limitation, to all who may currently be incarcerated in US federal prisons who would qualify.

Sincerely,
Name:
Address
City/State/Zip

Marc Emery is a Canadian marijuana activist currently imprisoned in the United States for selling marijuana seeds and using the money to fund political activism. Find out more about him at FreeMarc.ca

Source: Cannabis Culture

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Drugs

Injecting some evidence

Charlie Bell
The Tab Cambridge: May 3, 2014

Drugs are not something that many of us feel terribly comfortable talking about – but after hearing CUCA’s debate on the subject this week, it got me thinking. Because the main thing that simply wasn’t on the agenda is evidence – and to me, that’s where any debate on the use, abuse, or whatever, of these drugs should begin, continue and end with. Call me a boring medic, with slavish obedience to scientific method and evidence-based policy, but to tackle something like legalisation of drugs and its ramifications without it, you are an idiot.

We can all scream our political ideology and score cheap points – God knows I enjoy doing that – but drugs are too important to mess about with, and it’s time our generation started to demand the subject was properly covered. At the moment we live in a somewhat bonkers world where we all know of a lot of people who have taken, or are currently taking, illegal drugs (or their equivalent legal highs), but daren’t admit it just in case it wrecks our careers. Whilst arrests and criminalisation are very unlikely, any vicious ladder-climber who wanted to bring anyone in a profession down could do so pretty easily by alleging they took drugs.

Sometimes people get away with it – even politicians seem to be able to admit to breaking the law with drugs as kids and not getting sacked. You only have to open a copy of Closer or similar (those delicious shit buckets of gutter journalistic tripe) to read the most outlandish drug confessions or celebrity bustings. Whilst most of them are too stupid to realise the potential consequences, there seems also to be a consensus amongst the police and indeed politicians that drug abusers won’t, on the whole, be prosecuted, particularly if they use ‘soft’ drugs. Which, of course, is an entirely misleading word.

Illegal, and indeed legal, drugs often have the propensity to be very addictive – hence those who use them often become addicts. It’s not rocket science; and given the huge number of drugs that are illegal, these people immediately become criminals. Also criminals are the providers and traffickers – and you don’t have to look outside the traditional gap-yah destinations to find a nice death penalty waiting for you if you rock up with a suitcase full of heroin.

[…]

The argument as to whether people should be treated on the NHS is an old one – should patients be treated for heart disease even if they are the size of a cross-channel ferry? More pertinently, should drunken slobs be given free treatment to vacuum out their stomach on a Friday night, after they’ve quite deliberately overindulged? To many, the points are similar – if you do something stupid, you should pay, or conversely, if we live in a society where everyone pays in, you should be able to do what you like. These arguments will go on and on – but for drugs, it’s slightly different, because many of them are illegal in the first place.

But to me, all of this seems to illustrate my point – where is the evidence for what drugs actually do, for how addictive they are, and for the risks they bring? Just as importantly, where are the comparisons with alcohol, or smoking, or all the other legal substances we use to escape from the mundanity of exam term? Is history really a good enough reason for alcohol to be legal but other drugs not? What even is a ‘drug’? And how about tobacco? We know it kills, in a grim, grim way – it’s almost guaranteed – yet that’s still legal?

It’s time for us to have a proper debate about this stuff, and to re-evaluate exactly why these kinds of substances are legal or illegal. We’re not in a strong position at the moment – not that long ago, the government sacked Prof David Nutt from the drugs advisory board because his evidence didn’t support policy. Sure, it might turn out that alcohol is more damaging than other drugs – but that would already be the case if that were to be found out, and it’s better to know than to continue in dangerous ignorance. Not until we know the effects of these things can we start to decide how to properly police them – certainly not without the entirely justified allegations of arbitrary decision-making and legal laziness.

(Read the full article at The Tab Cambridge)

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Banksters, Corporate Welfare, Drugs

Wall Street and the Global Laundering of Drug Money

Big Banks Started Laundering Massive Sums of Drug Money In the 1980s … And Are Still Doing It Today

Washington’s Blog: May 2, 2014

For More Than 30 Years, the Big Banks Have Been Key Players In the Drug Trade

Official statistics show that huge sums of drug money are laundered every year:

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) conducted a study to determine the magnitude of illicit funds generated by drug trafficking and organised crimes and to investigate to what extent these funds are laundered.  The report estimates that in 2009, criminal proceeds amounted to 3.6% of global GDP, with 2.7%  (or USD 1.6 trillion) being laundered.

This falls within the widely quoted estimate by the International Monetary Fund, who stated in 1998 that the aggregate size of money laundering in the world could be somewhere between two and five percent of the world’s gross domestic product.  Using 1998 statistics, these percentages would indicate that money laundering ranged between USD 590 billion and USD 1.5 trillion. At the time, the lower figure was roughly equivalent to the value of the total output of an economy the size of Spain.

Indeed, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says that drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis.

This started a long time ago. For example, Citibank was caught laundering drug money for Mexican cartels in 2001.

In the 1990s, earlier, Citibank apparently set up special client accounts for a big drug dealer:

One of the more infamous cases involving taxpayer bailed-out Citigroup’s ties to money laundering drug cartels emerged in the late 1990s when Raúl Salinas de Gortari, the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas, was arrested after his wife, Paulina Castañón, attempted to withdraw $84 million from a Swiss account controlled by Raúl under an alias.

***

According to a 1995 Los Angeles Times report, Salinas “amassed at least $100 million in suspected drug money.”

Switzerland’s top prosecutor at the time, Carla del Ponte, “launched the investigation after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration supplied information that led Swiss agents to the accounts in Geneva, where they arrested Raúl Salinas’ wife and her brother on Nov. 15 as the pair attempted to withdraw more than $83 million.”

Del Ponte told the Los Angeles Times that after observing Salinas’ interrogation by Mexican federal prosecutors the sums found in those accounts were “suspected to be from the laundering of money related to narcotics trafficking.”

In 1998, when Swiss prosecutors completed their Salinas investigation, The New York Times disclosed that “Swiss police investigators have concluded that a brother of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari played a central role in Mexico’s cocaine trade, raking in huge bribes to protect the flow of drugs into the United States.”

***

A 1998 report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) pointed a finger directly at Citibank. Investigators revealed that “Mr. Salinas was able to transfer $90 million to $100 million between 1992 and 1994 by using a private banking relationship formed by Citibank New York in 1992. The funds were transferred through Citibank Mexico and Citibank New York to private banking investment accounts in Citibank London and Citibank Switzerland.”

With the connivance of bank officials, in 1992 Salinas was able to “effectively disguise” the source of those funds and their destination.

Indeed, with hefty fees secured from assisting their well-connected client Salinas, Citibank “set up an offshore private investment company named Trocca, to hold Mr. Salinas’s assets, through Cititrust (Cayman) and investment accounts in Citibank London and Citibank Switzerland.”

***

A 1999 Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report on “Private Banking and Money Laundering” revealed that “a culture of secrecy pervades the private banking industry.”

“For example,” Senate investigators disclosed, “in the case of Raul Salinas . . . the private bank hid Mr. Salinas’ ownership of Trocca by omitting his name from the Trocca incorporation papers and naming still other shell companies as the shareholders, directors, and officers. Citibank consistently referred to Mr. Salinas in internal bank communications by the code name ‘Confidential Client Number 2′ or ‘CC-2.’ The private bank’s Swiss office opened a special name account for him under the name of ‘Bonaparte’.”

In the 1980s, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) – apparently backed by top CIA officials – laundered drug money.  Time Magazine reported in 1991:

Because the US wanted to supply the Mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the largest US intelligence stations in the World. `If BCCI is such an embarrassment to the US that forthright investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with the blind eye the US turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan’, said a US intelligence officer.

As Wikipedia notes, Alfred McCoy (Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and one of the world’s top experts on drug trafficking)

[McCoy] uncovered money laundering activities by banks controlled by the CIA, first the Castle Bank which was then replaced by the Nugan Hand Bank, which had as legal counsel William Colby, retired head of the CIA.  He also alludes to the BCCI, which seems to have played the same role as the Nugan Hand Bank after its collapse in the early 1980s, claiming that “the boom in the Pakistan drug trade was financed by BCCI.

Citibank was still laundering Mexican drug money in 2001.

And nothing has changed since then.

The big banks are still laundering staggering sums of drug money.  See this, this, this, this, this, this and and this.

An HSBC employee who blew the whistle on that banks’ money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels says: “America is losing the drug war because our banks are [still] financing the cartels“, and “Banks financing drug cartels … affects every single American“.

(And see this.)

(read the full article at Global Research)

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Drugs, Privacy, Tyranny

Pennsylvania Supreme Court: No Warrant Needed to Search Citizens’ Vehicles

By Jay Syrmopoulos
Ben Swann: May 2, 2014

The Pennsylvania Supreme court, in a 4-2 decision, has issued a ruling that police officers are not required to obtain a search warrant before searching a vehicle. This decision overturns the protections offered by the Pennsylvania state constitution as well as those enumerated in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The court opinion, issued by Justice Seamus McCaffery concluded that, “the prerequisite for a warrantless search of a motor vehicle is probable cause to search.”

The case stemmed from a 2010 traffic stop by the Philadelphia police department, for a vehicle having dark tinted windows. The police subsequently found two pounds of marijuana under the hood of the car.

Prior to this decision police were not allowed to search a vehicle without driver consent, illegal substances in plain view or a search warrant. Drivers had the ability to refuse a search request, which would then require the officer to produce a warrant signed by a judge for the search to take place. Based on this ruling the standard to search has now been lowered to an officers belief of reasonable probable cause.

The police applauded the decision. According to Lancaster Online, New Holland Police Lt. Jonathan Heisse said, “It is a ruling that helps law enforcement as they continue to find people in possession of illegal drugs,” as reported by Brett Hambright.

However not all parties felt this was a wise decision.

In the dissent, Justice Debra McCloskey concluded that the ruling, “heedlessly contravenes over 225 years of unyielding protection against unreasonable search and seizure which our people have enjoyed as their birthright,” and went on to state that the decision was “diametrically contrary to the deep historical and legal traditions.”

A number of defense attorneys viewed the decision as extreme governmental overreach. Jeffrey Conrad, of Clymer Musser & Conrad, in a statement to Hambright, said, “It’s an expanding encroachment of government power,” and followed up by saying, “It’s a protection we had two days ago, that we don’t have today. It’s disappointing from a citizens’ rights perspective.”

(read the full article at Ben Swann)

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Corporate Welfare, Drugs, Privacy

High schools to drug test using company of school president’s brother

RT: May 1, 2014

Three Catholic schools in the Cleveland, Ohio area will begin mandatory drug testing using students’ hair in the next school year. The CEO of the company performing the testing is the brother of one of the school’s presidents.

Gilmour Academy, St. Edward High School, and St. Ignatius High School announced the new policy to students and their parents on Monday. The schools will use Psychemedics Corporation for the drug tests on hair follicles. Psychemedics president and CEO Raymond Kubacki is the brother of St. Edward president James Kubacki.

K.C. McKenna, vice president of admissions and marketing at St. Edward High School, told the Cleveland Scene that the decision to work with Psychemedics came after several years of research led by an internal committee made up of members of the board of trustees, a faculty member, and members of the administration.

“Certainly, Jim knew a little more about the process because of his brother being involved, but his brother being CEO of that company in no way led to us making the decision to use Psychemedics,” he said.

“From Day One, I told them this was my brother’s company,” the St. Edward’s president told the Plain Dealer. But in their announcements, the schools made no mention of a connection between anyone at the schools and Psychemedics.

“The short answer is Gilmour was very much aware of that connection from the beginning and it was never an issue,” Gilmour spokesman Devin Schlickmann told the Plain Dealer.

“How we picked the company isn’t of interest to high school boys,” St. Ignatius spokeswoman Lisa Metro said. “They’re more interested in how it’s going to play out to them.” Metro also revealed why the committee decided to go with Psychemedics: “They were the only lab with full FDA clearance to do the testing we were looking for,” she added.

The schools said the drug testing is preventative, and not evidence of substance abuse among students, according to a statement on the St. Edward website. “The schools decided to initiate drug testing out of a deep concern for the health and well-being of students,” the statement says. “The primary purpose for this initiative is to give students another reason to say “no” to the pressures of using illegal drugs and to help them remain substance-free. This initiative is simply one more component in our student wellness efforts.”

However, school leaders told The Plain Dealer that the heroin epidemic in Northeast Ohio was the catalyst for implementing the program.

The statement did outline the decision to use hair testing over body fluids like urine or saliva. “Many drugs are undetectable in urine as early as 72 hours after use, whereas they can be detected in hair samples for several months after ingestion,” the statement says. “In addition, it is much more difficult to adulterate or substitute hair samples and collection is much less intrusive, as well as more cost-effective.”

Hair-testing kits cost $39 to $50 each, schools that currently work with Psychemedics told the Scene. All high school students – about 980 at St. Ed’s, 340 at Gilmour, and 1,500 at St. Ignatius – will be subject to testing at the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year, and then random testing will occur throughout the year. The three contracts combined will pay Psychemedics nearly $120,000 for the initial testing alone, the Plain Dealer reported.

According to the St. Ed’s statement, hair testing can detect drug use for up to three months. The timing of the announcement gives students a four-month warning before testing begins. “The only good thing about this is that they announced it this early,” one Ignatius student wrote on the Scene site. “They practically winked at us while saying that the test can detect drugs used up to 3 months prior to it, and the first tests won’t begin for 4 months.”

The student also noted, “We were also told that shaved heads would not work as the test can be done with even arm hair…And as a side note, the students will likely just be drinking a lot more.”

(read the full article at RT)

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Drugs

New Rob Ford Drug Video Confirmed; Rob Ford Takes Leave

The Globe and Mail: Apr. 30 2014

A second video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking what has been described as crack cocaine by a self-professed drug dealer was secretly filmed in his sister’s basement early Saturday morning.

The clip, which was viewed by two Globe and Mail reporters, shows Mr. Ford taking a drag from a long copper-coloured pipe, exhaling a cloud of smoke and then frantically shaking his right hand. The footage is part of a package of three videos that the drug dealer says he surreptitiously shot around 1:15 a.m., and which he says he is now selling for “at least six figures.”

The footage comes to light weeks after Mr. Ford embarked on a re-election campaign styled on the importance of second chances and forgiving mistakes. Nearly a year ago, the mayor thrust himself into worldwide infamy when another drug dealer, Mohamed Siad, tried to sell another video of the mayor allegedly smoking crack to media outlets in Canada and the United States. At the time, the mayor denied using the drug, only to later admit that he had smoked crack cocaine in a “drunken stupor” and that he was not an addict.

Since then Mr. Ford has been filmed numerous times in public appearing erratic and acting impaired. In each instance, the mayor has admitted to drinking, but never to using drugs. A few weeks ago when asked directly if he was continuing to use drugs, Mr. Ford said: “You guys ask stupid questions.”

Approached at City Hall Wednesday evening, Mr. Ford declined to respond to questions about the video. Shortly after The Globe confronted Mr. Ford, his lawyer said the mayor was going to take a break from campaigning.

In one of the clips shown to The Globe and Mail Wednesday, the mayor rapidly shifts his weight back and forth on the spot, talking into his cellphone and his right arm swinging at his side. When the camera pans around the room, a man that looks like Alessandro “Sandro” Lisi, the mayor’s former driver who has been charged with drug dealing and extortion, can be seen in the background. Mr. Ford’s sister, Kathy, who has admitted in media interviews to being a drug addict, is sitting in front of her brother. In the last of three clips, Mr. Ford is holding the pipe and speaking to his sister.

(Read the full story and see more pictures at The Globe & Mail)

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Drugs

1 Step Forward 2 Steps Back: Medical Marijuana ILLEGAL in Washington State

MMJ Now Illegal In Washington State. Yes, Washington State.

By Canna Law Blog : April 25, 2014

The Washington State Court of Appeals just held that medical marijuana activity (even patient cultivation in the home) is illegal under current State law.

The long road to this disappointing decision began a couple of years ago when an access point (essentially a medical outlet for medical marijuana patients) and an advocacy group sued the city of Kent in an effort to block the city from implementing a zoning ordinance that would essentially prohibit collective gardens, both commercial and home grows. The case made its way through King County Superior Court (which upheld Kent’s ban) and eventually reached the Washington State Supreme Court. The Supreme Court issued an emergency stay of the Kent ban but ultimately decided to send it back down to the Court of Appeals for a full decision on the merits.

[…]

The Court of Appeals not only upheld the City of Kent’s ban, it also ruled that operating a medical marijuana collective garden or access point constitutes criminal activity. We fully expect city attorneys in those cities opposed to cannabis will use this Court of Appeals decision to shut down or prevent collective gardens and access points.

We feel for our friends involved with medical cannabis in Washington State. We do not read this Court of Appeals decision as having any impact on recreational marijuana in Washington.

(Read the full article at Canna Law Blog)

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Drugs

FDA Regulating E-Cigarettes

FDA proposes first regulations for e-cigarettes

Michael Felberbaum
AP: April 24, 2014

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government wants to ban sales of electronic cigarettes to minors and require approval for new products and health warning labels under regulations being proposed by the Food and Drug Administration.

While the proposal being issued Thursday won’t immediately mean changes for the popular devices, the move is aimed at eventually taming the fast-growing e-cigarette industry.

The agency said the proposal sets a foundation for regulating the products but the rules don’t immediately ban the wide array of flavors of e-cigarettes, curb marketing on places like TV or set product standards.

Any further rules “will have to be grounded in our growing body of knowledge and understanding about the use of e-cigarettes and their potential health risks or public health benefits,” Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg said.

Once finalized, the agency could propose more restrictions on e-cigarettes. Officials didn’t provide a timetable for that action.

[…]

In addition to prohibiting sales to minors and requiring health labels that warn users that nicotine is an addictive chemical, e-cigarette makers also would be required to register their products with the agency and disclose ingredients. They also would not be allowed to claim their products are safer than other tobacco products.

They also couldn’t use words such as “light” or “mild” to describe their products, give out free samples or sell their products in vending machines unless they are in a place open only to adults, such as a bar.

Companies also will be required to submit applications for premarket review within two years. As long as an e-cigarette maker has submitted the application, the FDA said it will allow the products to stay on the market while they are being reviewed. That would mean companies would have to submit an application for all e-cigarettes now being sold.

(Read the full article at Yahoo)

Drugs

Ex-sheriff’s deputies charged with planting evidence at pot dispensary

By Kate Mather
LA Times: April 23, 2014

Two former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies have been charged with conspiracy, perjury and altering evidence in connection with planting guns inside a medical marijuana dispensary to justify two arrests in 2011, prosecutors said.

Julio Cesar Martinez, 39, and Anthony Manuel Paez, 32, were charged with one felony count each of conspiracy to obstruct justice and altering evidence as a peace officer, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. Martinez was also charged with two felony counts of perjury and one of filing a false report.

[…]

Prosecutors allege the former deputies wrote a report claiming that on Aug. 24, 2011, as they patrolled West 84th Place, they observed a narcotics transaction involving a person with a gun. Martinez said he followed that suspect into the dispensary, where he found two guns: one near a trash bin and another on a desk next to some ecstasy pills.

Two men were arrested: one for possession of an unregistered gun and the second for possession of a controlled substance while armed with a gun. Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, said charges were filed against the men but later dropped.

The sheriff’s Internal Criminal Investigation Bureau began investigating the incident a year later and discovered video from inside the dispensary that was “inconsistent” with the report filed by the deputies, prosecutors said.

(read the full article at LA times)

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Drugs

Arizona Supreme Court Rules Cannabis Drug Test Does Not Prove Impairment

Brian Skoloff
AP: April 22, 2014

Authorities can’t prosecute Arizona motorists for driving under the influence of marijuana unless the person is impaired at the time of the stop, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in the latest opinion on an issue that several states have grappled with across the nation.

The ruling overturned a state Court of Appeals decision last year that upheld the right of authorities to prosecute pot smokers for DUI even when there is no evidence of impairment.

The opinion focuses on two chemical compounds in marijuana that show up in blood and urine tests — one that causes impairment and one that doesn’t but stays in a pot user’s system for weeks.

Some prosecutors had warned that anyone in Arizona who used medical marijuana simply shouldn’t drive or they would risk facing DUI charges, a contention that drew the ire of pot advocates who claimed this interpretation of the law criminalized their legal use of the drug after voters approved it in 2010.

Tuesday’s state Supreme Court opinion removed that threat in explaining that while state statute makes it illegal for a driver to be impaired by marijuana, the presence of a non-psychoactive compound does not constitute impairment under the law.

[…]

Some states require signs of impairment before someone can be charged with driving under the influence of marijuana. Others have zero tolerance for the presence of any marijuana in the blood, whether in the form of active compounds that cause impairment or inactive compounds that don’t, while a few states have limits for how much active marijuana can be in the system, designed to be comparable to the .08-limit for drunken driving.

However, only eight of those states have laws that allow a driver to be charged with being under the influence for having even marijuana compounds in their systems that don’t cause impairment, according to the Marijuana Policy Project.

Last year, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that medical marijuana users should have some protections and that police must show that a driver is actually “under the influence” of the drug — meaning impaired — to seek criminal charges.

Tuesday’s ruling arises from the case of an Arizona man who was stopped by police for speeding and later acknowledged having smoked marijuana the night before. Blood tests revealed marijuana compounds in his system, however, not the form that causes impairment, according to court records.

He was charged with driving under the influence of a drug and operating a vehicle with the presence of the drug’s metabolite in his system.

The state Supreme Court noted that the language of Arizona’s statute is ambiguous and does not make a distinction between the marijuana metabolite that causes impairment and the one that does not when determining whether criminal charges are warranted. Prosecutors had argued that the statute’s reference to “its metabolite” when referring to drug compounds detected in a driver’s system covers all compounds related to drugs, not just those that cause impairment.

This interpretation “leads to absurd results,” the high court panel wrote. “Most notably, this interpretation would create criminal liability regardless of how long the metabolite remains in the driver’s system or whether it has any impairing effect.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Ann A. Scott Timmer wrote that the law helps “enhance detection and prosecution of drugged driving” and should remain unchanged. She suggested any constitutional challenges would be better addressed on a case-by-case basis.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery expressed disappointment with the ruling, noting the court should have left such a decision up to the Legislature to clarify.

However, attorney Michael Alarid III, who represented the man charged in the case, said “we’re very pleased, and we’re very relieved that it’s finally over.”

“This does have far-reaching impacts on medical marijuana patients,” he added. “And it basically corrects an error in the interpretation of the law.”

(read the full article at Star Tribune)

RELATED NEWS:
Study shows THC blood tests can’t test impairment

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