Colorado Attempts to Determine How High Is Too High to Drive

Cue the Red & Meth classic.

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Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper signed an executive order that added Amendment 64 to the state's constitution yesterday. This legalized the recreational use of marijuana. It also presents several challenges, including figuring out just how high is too high to drive. To solve the problem, Hickenlooper has created a task force that will also get to the bottom of administrative concerns, such as taxation and permits.

Washington State officially legalized marijuana last week, and set the limit at 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood, but that failed to pass in Colorado's legislature. Another hotly-debated topic is "rebuttable presumption," which states that anyone caught driving with THC in their system will have a chance to defend themselves before a jury who will determine if the person was too stoned to be operating a vehicle.

Rep. Dan Pabon, who was appointed to the task force, has a simple solution. "Someone can be high speeding, but that doesn't necessarily mean that their level of THC caused them to speed. They could be a bad driver," he said. 

Larry Frieling, chair for the National Organizaiton to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML), also says that this is a difficult point to asses because there's no road sobriety test for marijuana. "If you can stand on one leg and bounce up and down does that mean you can drive or not?" Frieling said.

The weed task force has two months to determine a concrete system, which will be effective on July 1.

[via Gawker]

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