When it comes to impaired driving, Americans largely understand the risks of alcohol. Decades of research, public awareness campaigns, and law enforcement efforts have created a system where impairment can be measured, prosecuted, and deterred with relative consistency.
Drug-impaired driving is a different story.
As the founder of DUID Victim Voices, I have spent years working with families whose lives have been forever altered by drivers impaired by marijuana and other drugs. Their stories are heartbreaking, but they also reveal a troubling reality: while drug-impaired driving is a growing threat on America’s roads, our ability to identify, measure, and prosecute it remains woefully inadequate.
Unlike alcohol, there is no universally accepted measure that can reliably determine whether someone is impaired by marijuana, hemp, or other drugs at any given moment. Researchers, toxicologists, and traffic safety experts such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have long recognized that tetrahydrocannabinol levels in a person’s blood do not correlate with “impairment” in the same way blood alcohol concentration levels do with alcohol. Simply put, a driver may have elevated THC levels without being impaired, while another may be significantly impaired despite relatively low levels.
This scientific reality creates a difficult dilemma for law enforcement tasked with keeping our roads safe. The tools needed to successfully identify, charge, and convict drugged drivers, unfortunately, do not exist.
Officers often must rely on observations, field sobriety tests, and expert evaluations to determine whether a driver is impaired by drugs. Those tools can be effective, but they are inherently more subjective than a breathalyzer, and defense attorneys know this. As a result, proving drug-impaired driving beyond a reasonable doubt is often far more difficult than proving alcohol impairment.
And it has never been legally easier to consume intoxicants other than alcohol as it is today. While some states have legalized marijuana, Congress unintentionally opened a loophole in the 2018 Farm Bill for hemp-derived THC products to be sold across the country. Since then, THC hemp gummies, drinks, and other products have been sold in gas stations and convenience stores, even in states that haven’t legalized marijuana. The level of impairment caused by consuming THC hemp products and traditional marijuana is indistinguishable. Predictably, our roads have become increasingly dangerous.
The consequences are visible at the state level, including in Colorado, one of the states with the most extensive data on drug-impaired driving. Research examining Colorado impaired-driving cases found significant differences in conviction rates depending on the substance involved. While alcohol-only cases resulted in conviction rates of 90% for those with a toxicology test, THC-only cases produced substantially lower conviction rates, despite evidence of impairment.
And as the American College of Surgeons reported last year, 40% of deceased drivers in Ohio’s Montgomery County motor vehicle crashes tested positive for THC. For families who have lost loved ones to drugged drivers, this debate is not academic — it’s human. Every unresolved weakness in our impaired-driving framework has real-world consequences.
That is why we cannot afford to ignore the growing threat posed by today’s highly potent THC hemp products. As these products have proliferated, our laws and enforcement tools have struggled to keep pace. Independent testing shows the THC levels in these products are wildly inconsistent, making responsible use impossible. Public education efforts about the impacts of these products are virtually nonexistent, resulting in many people consuming products without fully understanding their potency and the possible consequences of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence.
SUPREME COURT EXPANDS GUN RIGHTS FOR MARIJUANA USERS
The result is more impairment, uncertainty for law enforcement, and danger on our roadways.
Congress cannot solve every challenge surrounding drug-impaired driving overnight. Scientists are still working to develop better impairment detection tools, and law enforcement will continue facing evidentiary hurdles that do not exist with alcohol. But Congress can take an important step in making our roads safer by closing the THC hemp loophole. Our roads will be safer for it.
Ed Wood is the founder of DUID Victim Voices, a longtime advocacy organization that represents the interests of the victims of drugged driving, providing fact-based education and a victim perspective to decision makers and to the general public.