Prime Minister Stephen "Steve" Harper has unveiled new legislation that will target those who drive while stoned on drugs. This is almost sensible with one caveat: What kind of drugs?
The supposition is that the younger members of our society have swapped their reality-filtering habits from booze to marijuana. I suppose someone in Cabinet dusted off an old copy of the 1972 LeDain Commission that they found propping up the base of a file cabinet in the Privy Council Office.
Driving under the influence is something that is dangerous, no question there. You should not operate any kind of machinery while incapacitated.
Incapacitated includes booze, dope, cold medicine, allergy pills, lack of sleep, while using a cell phone, Blackberry, GPS Navigation system, reading the paper, or listening to meditation CD’s on the audio system. All your attention and skills must be focused on operating the equipment as safely and prudently as humanly possible.
I’ll declare my bias up front. I inhaled. I exhaled, then inhaled again. I drank the bong water.
I was part of the design and QA testing team that used a Lycoming aero engine air pump to create a multi-outlet smoking device that could service the cannabinoid needs of six people at once. And did a fine job of it, I might add.
I can vaguely remember being pulled over by the police in a small town who simply asked how soon the driver would be going home to get some rest. The correct answer was "In about 300 yards." which took some prompting from the officer, but we got the message and were sent on our way.
There is a memory of sliding down a snow-covered hill in back of a nunnery, on the fiberglass hardtop of a TR6 while twisted beyond redemption, wearing a set of gold lame wings that made me look like the FTD florist logo. I still have that hat.
There was a pool table incident which involved sleeping face down with my head in a corner pocket, telling bed time stories to a 9 ball. Another incident involving the bar at the Northwood Motel, midget strippers and Gunners from the 8th Canadian Hussars. No, not quite like that.
There were also incidents involving lifting sound equipment into a truck as the handles became serpents, dropping an Altec-Lansing Voice of the Theatre speaker on my foot. Apparently I was limping for a week, but don’t remember being injured. I can also remember seeing colours flowing out of loudspeakers while listening to Pink Floyd’s "Dark Side of the Moon"
I’ve taken the Via Rail "Canadian" in the company of funeral directors going to a convention, seeing square out of one eye and round out of the other. This is a neat trick, as I only have one eye, but it made sense at the time, as reality was enhanced by a funeral director with a seemingly endless supply of preloaded drinking straws.
I’ve woken up in Carleton Place at the old Revere Hotel, when the last thing I could clearly remember was being in Renfrew at Haramis’ Shady Lady Disco. I’ve been so drastically upside down that I’ve been forced to read a container of sour cream to get an approximate idea of the date. I’ve been driven home in the trunk of a car.
But only twice have I actually operated a motor vehicle while under the influence: It was dumb. I’m not proud of it and it scared the crap out of me. We took trains, cabs, busses, walked, staggered or crawled. Usually someone was designated the pilot and remained sensible.
To spot a person "under the influence" the police could perform a field sobriety test. That would nail the vast majority of those who are in no condition to operate a motor vehicle. All that is needed is a slight modification of the law to state that the person is incapable of operating the vehicle safely. Not that they are drunk, stoned, too tired, too stupid, or too distracted, just incapable of operating the vehicle safely.
Yes, it is a judgement call by the officer, but a field sobriety test is a reasonable benchmark that doesn’t attempt to quantify how incapacitated you are, or how you got there, merely that you are incapacitated.
That’s what we really want: People with their full faculties about them, operating motor vehicles.
RoadDave 