Refuting the Notion that ‘Standardized Field Sobriety Tests’ should be used to Test Drivers for Cannabis Usage
As we get closer and closer to legalization, everybody’s jockeying to figure out the best way to deal with cannabis-impaired drivers. On Friday, we spoke to a retired police Drug Recognition Expert about how their program works. Now, our next guest says that’s all hogwash.
Guest: Paul Doroshenko – Criminal defense lawyer with Acumen Law
Steele and Drex: You were frustrated on Friday. You thought this guy had no idea what he was talking about. What do you think?
Paul Doroshenko: Well Standardized Field Sobriety Tests were never intended to test for anything but alcohol. That’s what they were tested for. There’s been no scientific studies, because it would never happen, to suggest that Standardized Field Sobriety Tests would reveal anything other than impairment for alcohol. To start off and say we’re going to detect cannabis impaired drivers with Standardized Field Sobriety Tests is absurd.
The first thing they do is nystagmus. That’s looking for involuntary jerking of the eyes. Why does it happen with alcohol? Because alcohol affects not just your brain. it affects the muscles in your body. So the muscles in the edge of your eye, if Your eyes are pulled out to the side basically by looking at a police officer’s finger or pen, your eyes will start to jerk if you’ve got a lot of alcohol in your body. You get no nystagmus whatsoever from cannabis, none, 90% of the test is the nystagmus test, which doesn’t reveal anything about cannabis.
Steele and Drex: So here’s my problem with it. We’ve talked to a guy here from Cannabix Technologies. They’re close to coming up with some sort of breath test that they think can detect marijuana if you’ve smoked it within the past 2 hours. But the reality is there’s no definitive way to tell whether a driver is high short of a blood test?
Paul Doroshenko: I guess the question there is are they high. Is their ability to operate a motor vehicle impaired by the drug. OK? If they can drive their car and they get pulled over, they’re usually driving just fine. they can drive their car, maybe they smell of weed. I’ll tell you, the smell is the first thing. If there’s a smell the police officer is going to jump into this investigation. But aside from the smell of weed there’s almost nothing else. So why would you just jump to the conclusion that they’re impaired in their ability to drive?
Listen to the full interview here!