POLL: Should President Trump de-list (federally decriminalize) marijuana?
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OK, you seem to be jumping around a fair bit on the roadside stop process so let's give you the scenario and you describe what you think should happen. Officer observes vehicle crossing the lane demarcation line giving probable cause to initiate a stop for operating a vehicle while impaired. Officer approaches the vehicle and observes pot-related paraphernalia or (even vaguer but equally valid legally) smells marijuana so it is possible the operator was smoking in the vehicle (analogous to alcohol rules). Driver refuses to perform field-sobriety tests for THC intoxication. Officer, having PC for impairment and passive non-compliance by driver, then....<please fill in the blank assuming no accurate roadside testing options and guidelines for intoxication limits>.
The same issue as above applies for corporate employment. Insurance companies will use State and Federal intoxication and abuse guidelines for setting the employee acceptable limits. They may choose a tighter standard if they wish, but ultimately the issue of impairment while working is something that the companies would be looking to the Government standards to define. The current on-site testing is not refined enough to show whether someone has used it at home (i.e. not impaired, a liability risk, or a termination offense) versus the operator of crane/tow-motor/sheet-metal bender/diesel railroad engine who just had an accident at work and might be a legal liability if they cannot test him to determine whether he was intoxicated with a legal substance at the time. That's just the most obvious case of risk.
Corporations with any risk of accidental injury/death, breach of fiduciary responsibility, classified or NDA work requirements, working with children/elderly, medical/pharmacy work, and probably some other insurance risks that I am not thinking of at the moment would default to all having blanket prohibitions against employees engaging in a legal activity during the hours spent outside the company? I.e. any marijuana use anytime which is the current testable standard is grounds for dismissal even though it is a legal substance? First accident/mistake at work for anyone who doesn't consistently piss clean equals automatic termination? Because, otherwise, it appears that they will have the same insurance/bonding/licensing risk issues if they cannot define impairment at the time of any issue.
You've convinced me Braujager. Kamala was right. We should imprison people for marijuana, because DUI laws exist. And, corporate insurance considerations...
(smidge of sarcasm there)
I would rather suffer the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.
I'll mostly ignore the straw man, but I had hoped for a better quality of argument.
I have pointed out the legal issues that I can see in the body of law that would need resolution before Trump could meaningfully change the status of marijuana to legality. Nothing in my analysis argues for criminality of marijuana, only that the world as we know it establishes limits and simple tests for legal, intoxicating substances in popular use. Making the transition without those established opens up business liabilities and risks of government over-reach larger than you seem to understand if you think of them as 'inconveniences'. I fully encourage and support research into both of those necessary areas to allow legalization of marijuana at the earliest opportunity (for both my philosophical bias and financial benefit).
Oregon and California and Colorado have had no trouble managing it, despite the impotent unenforced federal ban that Trump could erase with an executive order.
If the geniuses who run Oregon and California can manage it, I believe that some how, some way, the rest of America can manage it.
No idea why you're continuing to explain to me that DUI is illegal.
Right now, early adopter states can force the driver to go to the hospital to have blood drawn; and, if any presence shows up, they can be charged with DUI (CO) because there is no official standard for intoxication - you are DUI if there's any evidence of 1) marijuana possession (including officer's nose) and 2) you ever corrected suddenly or reached the lane divider marker. So the issue is not that DUI is a crime, but that it is defined so broadly for marijuana that any vehicle operator is guilty of it by essentially subjective testimony.
However, imagine now we go national with the status-quo of CO (no roadside test, zero blood sample tolerance for DUI once PC established), other states following the early-adopter laws since, as you said, things are going smoothly enough in those genius-run States. Now, the financial incentive of added taxes and tourism revenues for soft-touch enforcement by the early-adopter States changes and the problems are replicated nation-wide.
Would you really like cops everywhere across the nation to be able to stop any driver they want, search the driver for officer safety during transport, hold the driver for the period of time to arrange transport to the hospital and medical services, have the blood drawn (up to 2 hours detention legally to this point), and then await the blood test results, then finally arrange the completely-clean, non-using driver (actual users now presumably have a court date and bond-arranging to look forward to) to be returned to his vehicle which was either left on the side of the road or towed someplace based on issues of traffic safety - all based on nothing more verifiable than "the officer swears that s/he saw the car swerve and smelled pot"?
Can you see where this simple 'investigation' just by its nature could be abused as a form of intimidation, revenue enhancement, or even by a lazy officer who wants to be off-calls for several hours while he baby-sits the driver at the busy hospital?
How does an occasional user ever dispute the officer's claims of intoxication PC since detectable traces of marijuana use can remain in the system for weeks?
Can you see any civil liberty issues with blood being used as a DNA evidence comparison once they have drawn it legally as part of their investigation, even if you are released later as sober?
Does having this DNA evidence become a bigger problem if it is more widespread? Would you trust State and Federal government... yes, I'll go there, even Kamala Harris... with a criminal/medical database of every vehicle operator's DNA if they could legally obtain it over time?
How hard would it be for corrupt officers to divert or later synthesize enough trace DNA to frame somebody?
And that's just some of the government side's unintended consequences, without any business issues e.g. your company firing you as a driver/operator because you now have a DUI liability for them.
Does all of this above maximize liberty?
It seems to me that the lesser risk to liberty is continuing the status-quo general Federal decriminalization while court cases in the early-adopter States and on-going research mean that we can have better intoxication definitions established and roadside testing developed so that the worst case for abuse is the equivalent of an alcohol DUI checkpoint and not a 4+ hour odyssey in police custody for the squeaky-clean non-user with a bonus charge(s) for any user with any detectable trace of marijuana in his/her system.