KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As road fa­tal­i­ties con­tin­ue to tow­er over 2018’s tal­ly, road safe­ty ad­vo­cates are im­plor­ing leg­is­la­tors to car­ry out prop­er re­search in de­ter­min­ing the le­gal lim­it for dri­ving while high.
Their con­cern comes as Gov­ern­ment moves to in­tro­duce the Cannabis Con­trol Au­thor­i­ty Bill and amend­ments to the Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act as it seeks to de­crim­i­nalise the use of mar­i­jua­na. Last year end­ed with 98 road fa­tal­i­ties but with five weeks left in 2019, there have been 107 deaths. 
Mar­i­jua­na con­tains a psy­choac­tive com­pound called Tetrahy­dro­cannabi­nol (THC) which gives a high sen­sa­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the US Li­brary of Med­i­cine, it can cause short-term mem­o­ry loss and im­pair mo­tor co­or­di­na­tion that in­ter­feres with dri­ving skills and in­creas­es the risk of in­juries. CBD (Cannabid­i­ol) is an­oth­er com­pound that is used for med­i­c­i­nal and health ben­e­fits. 
It is il­le­gal to dri­ve while im­paired by any sub­stance in all 50 US states. Even in states where mar­i­jua­na is le­gal, dri­ving while un­der the in­flu­ence re­mains il­le­gal.
Dur­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s con­sul­ta­tion on the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said that leg­is­la­tion was be­ing draft­ed to al­low po­lice of­fi­cers to use dru­gal­y­sers to mea­sure the con­tent of the drugs in a dri­ver’s sys­tem. Like the UK, it would al­low of­fi­cers to stop mo­torists and car­ry out field im­pair­ment test on those who they sus­pect may be high on drugs. The dru­gal­yser is a hand­held de­vice that al­lows for the mo­torist’s sali­va to be sam­pled from un­der the tongue. The sali­va mix­es with a reagent, caus­ing it to change colour and the tech­nol­o­gy will show a va­ri­ety of in­ten­si­ties to in­di­cate the mea­sure­ment of the drug in a per­son’s sys­tem.
A re­cent ex­pose by Wash­ing­ton NBC sug­gest­ed that the field tests com­mon­ly used by law en­force­ment to de­tect drugs have re­sult­ed in le­gal headaches for some CBD users whose prod­ucts test­ed pos­i­tive for mar­i­jua­na. The ar­ti­cle stat­ed that many gov­ern­ment foren­sic lab­o­ra­to­ries were not ca­pa­ble of mea­sur­ing the ex­act amount of THC in most CBD or mar­i­jua­na prod­ucts.
"While mar­i­jua­na is high in THC, it’s usu­al­ly found in on­ly trace amounts in hemp-de­rived CBD, which many claims have health ben­e­fits," the ar­ti­cle stat­ed.

Ar­rive Alive pres­i­dent Sharon In­gle­field said that while the Gov­ern­ment can in­tro­duce the leg­is­la­tion for the dru­gal­yser to mea­sure sub­stances like mar­i­jua­na, co­caine, met am­phet­a­mine, sleep­ing pills and oth­ers, what is cru­cial is the lim­it of drugs in a mo­torist's sys­tem that would be per­mit­ted for safe dri­ving. 
“The leg­is­la­tion needs not on­ly to in­tro­duce the dru­gal­yser but de­ter­mines how the drugs will be mea­sured. Just like how we mea­sure mi­cro­grammes of al­co­hol in a per­son’s sys­tem, the same thing has to hap­pen with the dru­gal­yser. It must be de­ter­mined, the cor­rect met­ric by which to mea­sure im­pair­ment be­fore the laws are in­tro­duced. I think it is im­per­a­tive if we de­crim­i­nalise mar­i­jua­na be­cause it would be hyp­o­crit­i­cal to al­low peo­ple to suf­fer from al­co­hol dis­ease while mar­i­jua­na is treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. 
“In my per­son­al view, mar­i­jua­na is no dif­fer­ent. There should be a no-tol­er­ance ap­proach to any kind of im­pair­ment when dri­ving, es­pe­cial­ly to new and novice dri­vers, bear­ing in mind we still have not in­tro­duced manda­to­ry de­fen­sive dri­ving and haz­ard pro­tec­tion in the school cur­ricu­lum and pri­ori­tise it in grant­i­ng a dri­ving per­mit,” In­gle­field said.
In cas­es of drug-use on the job, she said com­pa­nies who hire dri­vers are like­ly to stick to a ze­ro-tol­er­ance drug pol­i­cy. In­gle­field said Cor­po­rate T&T would do well to ed­u­cate their em­ploy­ees on this, es­pe­cial­ly with the de­mer­it point sys­tems that will be in­tro­duced soon. Not­ing that there is a cul­ture of law­less­ness, she said dri­vers should con­sid­er the con­se­quences of dri­ving while im­paired. Not on­ly could it lead to the sus­pen­sions of a dri­ver’s per­mits, but the loss of lives.
“Please con­sid­er the con­se­quences of your ac­tion and choose to do the right thing. Choose life be­cause your life will change very quick­ly if you’re caught by the po­lice. It im­pairs your dri­ving skills and more trag­i­cal­ly, it can land you in a se­ri­ous con­di­tion.”
Road Safe­ty Co­or­di­na­tor of the Po­lice Ser­vice Brent Bat­son said that a lot of the re­search cen­tres around the com­par­a­tive ef­fects of dri­ving while un­der the in­flu­ences of mar­i­jua­na and al­co­hol.  He said the quan­tifi­ca­tion of drugs in a dri­ver’s sys­tem or whether there will be a ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy for op­er­at­ing ve­hi­cles and ma­chin­ery is what has to be de­ter­mined.
“If the law per­mits the tol­er­ance of al­co­hol at 35 mi­cro­grammes of al­co­hol per 100 mil­ligrammes of breath and the ev­i­dence sug­gests that com­bin­ing it with mar­i­jua­na could have a syn­er­gis­tic ef­fect, it could cre­ate an area of risk. Be­fore we can un­der­stand this, the leg­is­la­tion has to be re­search-dri­ven be­fore de­ci­sion mak­ing. The counter-ar­gu­ment by those in sup­port of mar­i­jua­na use is go­ing to be that if you say re­search shows mar­i­jua­na by it­self af­fects dri­ving skill, how come you’re hav­ing a ze­ro-tol­er­ance for mar­i­jua­na while there is tol­er­ance for al­co­hol. My con­cern is the syn­er­gis­tic ef­fect of com­bin­ing drugs and al­co­hol,” Bat­son said.