Medical marijuana card comes with risks that threaten benefits | Nancy Eshelman

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Like a lot of people my age, I ache. Before I open my eyes in the morning, my shoulders and knuckles tell me if it’s raining. My knees and hips set off metal detectors. The table next to my recliner serves as a depository for super-sized bottles of acetaminophen and ibuprofen.

“Try medical marijuana,” friends suggested. “Swallow gummies, or vape, or rub on oils or creams to find relief.”

Before I leap, I ask questions. It’s the nature of my business. In response to one, a lawyer advised that a medical marijuana card from the state should never be kept in the same place as a driver’s license. Just having a card opens the door to a blood test for DUI, he said.

Sounded a tad paranoid to me. Then I stumbled onto the following from the ACLU: “There are more than 700,000 people who have medical marijuana cards in Pennsylvania — not a single one of them can lawfully drive. If even a trace amount of marijuana metabolite is detectable in the body, including weeks after medical marijuana use when the person is absolutely not impaired, the person would currently commit a DUI.”

Marijuana, experts say, can be detected in someone’s body up to a month after use. So, if police pull over a driver or if she is involved in an accident and asked to take a blood test, she could be guilty of DUI even if the marijuana use was days in the past.

When I took my questions to a spokesman for the state police, he said it’s a bit more involved. “Police must have reasonable suspicion that a driver is under the influence and incapable of safely operating a motor vehicle” before anyone starts talking about blood tests, Lt. Adam Reed said.

Reasonable suspicion involves “making observations of the operator’s driving ability, or lack thereof,” such as weaving, running a red light or involvement in a crash, he said. It also includes “interacting with and making observations of the operator.”

That said, the number of DUI arrests involving drug use has increased in the last several years, Reed said.

Of the 19,063 DUI arrests logged by state police in 2023, 43% included drivers impaired on drugs or a combination of drugs and alcohol. That can be illegal or prescription drugs; their data doesn’t make a distinction.

PennDOT, which keeps statistics on state and local police, reported 29,678 charges for drugged driving in 2022, or more than 35% of all charges filed under the DUI law.

Reed said Department of Health statistics put the number of medical marijuana users in the state at 440,949. The ACLU claimed 700,000. Whatever the number, Pennsylvanians are living in one of 12 states that allow no tolerance for any narcotic detected in the blood. One trace equals drunken driving.

State Rep. Chris Rabb, D-Philadelphia,introduced a bill last year that would change the law and require proof of impairment. What he’s aiming for is a law that says just because you have a medical marijuana card and just because you have cannabis in your system, you are not necessarily impaired. It would recognize that a blood test can detect what you ingested yesterday — or last week.

The bill seems to be going nowhere in the House.

Rabb, who once had a medical marijuana card, would like to see other adjustments to the law. He said 90% of medical marijuana users don’t realize the risks they take simply by having a card.

Last November, he told a reporter for City & State Pennsylvania: “When I signed up, they didn’t tell me that if you’re a gun owner, or you have a driver’s license, or you’re a tenant, or you’re an employee, that you could be fired, you could be arrested, you can be evicted by being a law-abiding medical cannabis patient.”

The card, he said, offers no protections.

“It just allows you to buy stuff at a dispensary. What you do with it, how you use it, where you use it, when you use it are things that can get you into serious, serious trouble even if you haven’t done anything wrong.”

So the question remains: Are the risks worth the relief?

NANCY ESHELMAN: columnist1@verizon.net