As New York's cannabis industry continues to evolve, law enforcement faces a new challenge: people driving high.
Smoking cannabis before or while driving is illegal with similar punishments to driving under the influence of alcohol.
If you drive drunk and an officer pulls you over, they can perform a breathalyzer test, but as Sgt. Jonathan Cook, who heads the drug and alcohol training program in the New York State Police, explains that's not so simple with cannabis.
"Cannabis is unique because it actually stores in your fat cells," Cook said. "It leaves your bloodstream pretty quickly, which makes it a challenge for us on the enforcement side, because we really need to be able to get a blood sample quickly if we think someone's impaired by cannabis. It doesn't leave your body in that same linear way. So impairment can last longer than alcohol, or leave the body at kind of a different rate."
With alcohol, there are universal standards on what a single drink is and the legal limit as it leaves the body linearly. Cannabis doesn't have a legal limit in New York. It's also difficult as people have different tolerance levels and the way they consume a product whether it be smoking or an edible will affect them at different rates.
"Cannabis definitely is a problem," Cook said. "Even in small quantities, it can cause divided attention impairment. Driving is the ultimate divided attention task so that's certainly a risk."
So how can an officer test someone if they suspect they're driving high? Cook said they look at the totality of circumstances.
"How did they drive the vehicle?" Cook said. "How did they stop the vehicle? If there's enough that accumulates to the point where you think you should be doing fields of variety tests, an officer can ask them to exit the car and do that."
Cannabis can impair driving resulting in slowed reaction times, altered perceptions of time and distance and difficulty following the road and maintaining lane position. Driving while impaired by a drug carries a fine for first-time offenders of up to $1,000, a license revoked for at least six months and the potential for up to 1 year in jail.
