Can You Get A DUI For Being High?

In Ontario, a driver who is found to be high on drugs can be hit with a temporary license suspension. A $180 license reinstatement fee to the province is also charged. The penalties become worse for repeat offenders. For a first offense, they will receive a three-day license suspension, for their second offense, a seven-day license suspension, and for third offense a thirty-day license suspension. From 2015-2016, police charges for drug-impaired driving increased by over 700% from 21 to 150.

Having said this, it is much more difficult for police to persecute Marijuana related driving offenses than alcohol-related driving offenses. In Canada in 2014, there were 37 impaired charges related to alcohol for every 1 laid for drugs. The system to determine driving under the influence of Marijuana is complicated and contains an eleven-step checklist that includes an examination of eye pupil size and muscle tone. The process can take hours and the testing can only be carried out by a small fraction of officers who have undergone 100 hours of training. Furthermore, the training costs $17,000.

In one case in Saskatchewan, a police officer pulled over a driver only to discover an “overwhelming odor” of weed in the car. In this case, the driver admitted to smoking pot and even had a roach clip on their dashboard. While the judge agreed that the motorist had been smoking, the ultimate ruling said that there was no concrete evidence to suggest that smoking had caused the impairment.

Driving under the influence of drugs has been against the law in Canada since the 1920s. It wasn’t until 2008, however, that the Government established a clear procedure for dealing with impairment by anything aside from alcohol. This is the system we still have in place. At the moment, reform to the current system is underway, and seeks to establish a new method for determining the THC levels in a motorist’s blood.

Researchers have determined that a limit of 7-10 nanograms of THC/ml of blood should be the point where provincial impaired driving is determined. This is the intoxication equivalent of having 0.05 per cent blood alcohol. A further challenge is that THC stays in the blood stream long after the person ingested it. It is thus fundamentally different from alcohol, since it is detectable even when a person is in no way impaired

For example, a motorist in Australia failed a cheek swab test even nine days after smoking pot. Despite being acquitted, the incident illustrates how policing the two substances on the road cannot be apples to apples.

So far, THC can be measured through tests of urine, blood and saliva, with saliva being the easiest to collect through cheek swabs. Blood, however, remains the most accurate. Challenges in determining toxicity aside, there are still penalties to suffer. With taxis, Uber, and even our trusty legs, the penalties of driving stoned can be easily avoided. Drive safe, gang!