May 10, 2011 08:23 PM UTC

Pot DUI Law Rejected, Lundberg Oddly Reasonable

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Independent’s Joseph Boven reports:

The Colorado Senate killed a bill that would have established a legal limit in Colorado to the amount of THC drivers can have in their system. Lawmakers on the right and left who voted against the bill felt they were attempting to make policy without adequate information. House Bill 1261, sponsored in the Senate by Grand Junction Republican Steve King, died  20 nays to 15 ayes.

Sens King and Lakewood Democrat Betty Boyd argued in favor of an Appropriations Committee’s decision to reinstate the bill’s original language, which created a THC limit of 5 nanograms per milliliter of blood. That move failed to satisfy. The Senate chose instead to vote on a version based on a Judiciary Committee report that said the science was not yet strong enough to support imposing a nanogram limits on marijuana users. They then voted the bill down.

“Some on the Senate Judiciary members got bamboozled by marijuana users who don’t want to see any limits,” King said.

Be that as it may, it seems a legitimate question arose about the persistence of the active ingredient in marijuana, Tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, at detectable but not intoxicating levels in a medical user’s bloodstream. The objection that ultimately killed this bill, as we understand it, was not a lack of desire to keep the roads safe from intoxicated drivers, but whether or not the standard set in the bill would prevent even people who haven’t smoked pot a considerable period of time, thus presumably quite safe to do so, from legally driving.

As the Independent’s Boven continues, this argument proved compelling to none other than arch-conservative Sen. Kevin Lundberg of Loveland–who, if you haven’t heard, has some documented trouble understanding (or at least accepting) scientific principles.

Lundberg said he had learned that medical marijuana was not like alcohol and that marijuana remained much longer in the system. He said lawmakers might be impeding on patient rights unnecessarily.

“To say that you can use [marijuana] but you can not drive ever-we have to be very careful when we go down that road,” Lundberg said.

Way to look at the science instead of knee-jerk presumptions, Senator Lundberg! While you’re on this newfound end-of-session reasonableness kick, let’s talk carbon dioxide.