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2nd ruling: Pot law doesn’t provide DUI immunity This is complete total bullsh*t!!!! When we voted on Prop 203, which is Arizona's Medical Marijuana Act it specifically said that while driving stoned on marijuana is a crime, that a medical marijuana patient could not be convicted of DUI simply because of marijuana metabolites in their body. Marijuana metabolites can stay in your body for over a month. http://www.azleg.state.az.us/ars/36/02802.htmThis is why the Founders passed the Second Amendment. To give us the ability to dump those government tyrants when they refuse to obey the law. 2nd ruling: Pot law doesn’t provide DUI immunity By - Associated Press - Wednesday, November 5, 2014 PHOENIX (AP) - Another court ruling says Arizona residents who have medical marijuana cards allowing them to legally smoke pot can still be prosecuted under laws against driving under the influence while having marijuana in their system. A state Court of Appeals panel of three judges ruled last month that a medical marijuana user wasn’t immune from prosecution under DUI laws. A different panel of Court of Appeals judges reached the same conclusion in a ruling issued Tuesday. It stems from the cases of two defendants, both of whom had medical marijuana cards. The defendants pointed to a medical marijuana law provision that provides a partial legal shield for pot usage prescribed by a physician. However, the latest ruling notes that physicians don’t prescribe medical marijuana. They only certify a patient’s medical eligibility.
Ruling: Medical pot can lead to DUI, even if driver isn’t impaired By: Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services October 21, 2014 , 3:57 pm LA medical marijuana card is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for motorists found with active components of the drug in their system, no matter how little, the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday. The judges rejected arguments by the attorney for Travis Darrah that the positive drug test, by itself, cannot be used to convict him of driving under the influence of drugs. The judges said prosecutors need not prove actual impairment. Tuesday’s ruling is unlikely to be the last word. Attorney John Tatz said he may seek Supreme Court review, saying the decision is in direct contradiction to the 2010 voter-approved Arizona Medical Marijuana Act. That’s also the assessment of Chris Lindsey, a legislative analyst with the Marijuana Policy Project which crafted the law. Darrah, who has a state-issued card allowing him to obtain and use marijuana, was arrested by Mesa police in 2011. He was charged with two separate counts of driving under the influence of drugs. One makes it illegal to drive while impaired. The other says a person cannot operate a motor vehicle while there is any illegal drug or its metabolite in his or her body. That was based on a blood test which showed evidence of an active component of marijuana. Tatz asked for the second count to be dismissed. He acknowledged that the 2010 law does not make it legal for a medical marijuana cardholder to operate a motor vehicle while under the influence of the drug. But Tatz pointed out the law also says medical marijuana users cannot be considered under the influence solely because of the presence of metabolites or components of the marijuana “that appear in insufficient concentration to cause impairment.” And he said there was no evidence presented that Darrah was not impaired. The judge refused to drop the charge and refused to let jurors hear that Darrah is a medical marijuana user. Jurors then found Darrah innocent of the impairment charge but, based solely on the blood test, guilty of the second charge. Appellate Judge Michael Brown, writing for the court, said he does not read the law – and the exemption – as broadly as Tatz. “If Arizona voters had intended to completely bar the state form prosecuting authorized marijuana users under (this section of the law), they could have easily done so by using specific language to that effect,” Brown wrote. Lindsey said all that ignores the intent of the law: to allow patients to use the drug and not be kept from driving simply because there was something left in their bodies that shows up in a blood test. The key, he said, is impairment – or the lack thereof. “You could have a small amount of active metabolite in the system and not be impaired,” he said, much as someone using a prescription painkiller would not be breaking the law if the concentration was too low to cause impairment. And Lindsey said the 2010 law was crafted to include the impairment requirement because of how long marijuana remains in the system. Tatz said there is precedent for that argument. He said the parallel charge for alcohol to the one his client was convicted is operating a motor vehicle with a blood-alcohol content of 0.08. If the blood test returns a number below that, that charge is dismissed. But the motorist still can be charged with driving while impaired if there is other evidence. In this case, Tatz said, there is no presumptive number in Arizona law for how much marijuana someone can have in the blood. So that, he said, leaves prosecutors only the option of charging Darrah with driving while impaired – a charge for which his client was found innocent by a jury. Brown also said this case is different than one where the Arizona Supreme Court earlier this year voided driving while intoxicated charges against another medical marijuana user. In that case, though, the justices pointed out that what was found in that driver’s blood was an inactive metabolite of the drug which can remain long after the effects had worn off.
Medical marijuana licenses don’t protect you from getting a DUI, court rules By Hunter Schwarz October 22 An Arizona court ruled Tuesday that drivers with medical marijuana licenses can still be charged with driving under the influence. Travis Darrah, a Phoenix man with a medical marijuana license, was charged in December 2011 with two counts of DUI. According to the court documents, a test taken after his arrest found he had active components found in marijuana in his system. A jury acquitted Darrah of the first count, driving while impaired, but not of the second, having a prohibited drug or its metabolite in his body. Darrah argued that because he was medically licensed to use marijuana and was not impaired, he was immune from being prosecuted. Judge Michael Brown wrote that had Arizona voters wanted to protect medical marijuana users from being penalized for operating vehicles, they would have put specific language into state law. “In the absence of such specific wording, we will not presume the electorate intended otherwise,” Brown wrote. There are about 50,000 Arizonans medically licensed to use marijuana under a 2010 state law, according to the Arizona Republic. |