blood THC/alcohol levels and driving impairment

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I just watched a segment on Fox News where they were saying that impaired driving under the influence of medical marijuana is increasingly a problem (although as far as I can tell, there isn't a study backing this up, its just something they decided to assert and discuss today).

They seem to imply that an inherent problem with legalizing bud is that there is no fast and easy indicator of acute intoxication level as there is with alcohol (the breathalyzer), and THC levels remain elevated for prolonged periods in a users bloodstream (varying with metabolism and other factors) such that the presence of detectable levels THC metabolites in urine or blood does not necessarily indicate recent use or intoxication.

I just don't understand why people are so obsessed with setting an arbitrary cut-off for the legal amount of a drug that can be present in the body for driving or any other activity, when we know drugs affect different people in different ways, and there isn't a one-size-fits-all guideline for what is appropriate.

According to this website:
http://www.ou.edu/oupd/bac.htm

I can have 2 drinks and still be below the legal limit of alcohol... but as a matter of fact, I am highly impaired after just 1 drink, while most of my friends would be safer drivers with a 0.8 BAC than I would be with a 0.3 BAC.

Regarding pot, some people drive well high, even better than normal, and some people perhaps are impaired. To me, it makes more sense for suspicious cops to test motor skills and cognitive function to determine whether someone is impaired, and if they are found to be impaired, further investigation will shed light on why they are impaired, whether it is due to alcohol, THC, being elderly, or anything else. If the impairment cannot be blamed on any acute cause, then the person should have their license taken away because apparently they just naturally suck at driving. If the impairment can be blamed on something like THC or alcohol, then the person better stop doing that or should lose their license, because clearly that substance affects them negatively. But I don't understand the focus on setting arbitrary cut-offs for everyone if they aren't as relevant to keeping the road safe as measures of actual impairment.

To summarize, I think that demonstrating impairment should be all that is required to put someone's license in jeopardy, and whether they want to blame their impairment on a substance and undergo some sort of counseling program and probation period is up to them (the alternative would be to forsake your license).

Is this not sensible?

Yeah I kind of agree with that, imparment does vary.....you would think people could be responsible enough to figure out how these substances effect them before they go driving and not exceed their limit before driving. What I don't get is I do not think there are any specific laws against driving while under the influence of prescription meds and some of those are very impairing.

But i don't know if the laws are ever going to reflect the reality of the situation.

You can get arrested for failing the physical and mental tests even if you are under the legal limit. The legal limit was set based on the fact that most people's level impairment increases slowly between .00 and .07, between .08 and .10 it picks up noticeably, and the level of impairment typically shoots up rapidly after that. Driving under the influence of anything, including prescription meds, is illegal. Just like impairment from prescription meds ,the most reliable field test for driving while impaired for cannabis use will be the field sobriety test for now. Drivers impaired by cannabis use have been found in controlled, closed course experiments to keep their car in the lines better than someone who is drunk, but their reaction time is dangerously slow and their ability to think fast is for all practical purposes nonexistent.

I have probaly the lowest alcohol tollerance on the planet...I get impaired with less than a full drink, but that is because I have seizures and alcohol can affect seizure activity. I learned to drive late. I am 34 and still dont have a driver's licence, but the never ending learners permit. I started learning when I was 30 bececause it took a long to time to prove that I am seizure free before being allowed to drive. However, I have this weird thing where I dont see stop signs right away and got into wreck because of it. Of course I have not driven since that wreck. I dont know why I dont see stop signs. It is just a mystery to me. Maybe I see them, but the signals to brain dont tell me that means I have to stop...I dunno. When I got into the wreck, I clearly did not remember seeing the stop sign. The bad part is it was 200 feet from my house. I knew that stop sign was there, but it never entered my mind that day.
Sometimes I think that I had a minor seizure...I dont know what happened. Either way, I dont really think I am fit to drive until I can figure out what happened and how to prevent it. I did go out that day before taking my morning seizure medicne, so maybe a minor seizure, a petite-mal, was what happened. If that is the case, then I just need to remember to take my medicne 30 minutes before driving.

@ jojobean

No offense, but it sounds like you shouldn't be driving if you have a tendency to have seizure.

Well, obviously the legal prohibitions will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But there is no question that in Canada, any operation of a motor vehicle while the driver's ability is impaired by alcohol or a drug is criminal. It matters not whether the drug is legal, or illegal, recreational or therapeutic.

As THC is known to mess up a person's ability to drive a car or fly a plane any person who has it in their body should be banned from driving if

1. The THC level is at least four times the standard deviation for the concentration measurement

and

2. The THC level is at least three times the background level of THC which is measured for a person who does not smoke weed.

I am basing my view on maths, I think that to find a person guilty we must be able to show beyond all reasonable doubt that they are guilty.

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Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.