THC In Your Blood Doesn’t Mean You’re Impaired

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Hi, everyone. Did you know just because you have THC in your blood doesn’t mean you’re impaired?
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This is Christina Williams with Just Criminal Law.
Speaker 2
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And this is David Mann,legal storytelling specialist. All right, Christina,so, first of all, what is THC exactly?
Speaker 1
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THC is the chemical found in marijuana. So whether you consume marijuana through an edible or vaping or smoking,the THC is going to get in your system.
Speaker 2
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Okay, so it’s like the alcohol in alcohol or beer, wine or whatever. THC is the substance that makes you feel high and you’re saying there’s not necessarily the same kind of connection between impairment and this level in your system.
Speaker 1
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Right. So everybody knows the legal limit for drinking and driving is .08. And so if the prosecutor has a blood result with 0.08 or higher,you can be found guilty of a DUI for consuming alcohol.
Speaker 2
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So if there isn’t a number, why would anyone ever go to jail or get in trouble for this?
Speaker 1
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Well, sometimes when a person is under the influence of marijuana, they might have an accident or they might display some terrible driving patterns and they end up getting pulled over. And then the officer,
you know, tries to figure out what’s causing the accident or what caused the terrible driving pattern.
And so they start to investigate him for a DUI.
Speaker 2
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Okay. So if it’s alcohol, well,they’re going to eventually do a blood test and alcohol is going to show a blood alcohol level of something and they’re going to say, oh, that’s over or under the legal limit. And that is what we have. The legal system agrees upon is the indication of impairment. But I think what you’re saying is that they might do a test like that on your blood for THC, get some kind of a reading, and it’s actually not going to tell them anything. Right?
Speaker 1
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Right. So, you know, the lab test will show a level of THC in your blood, but that doesn’t correlate with how impaired you may or may not have been while you were driving your vehicle.
Speaker 2
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The effect of alcohol is one thing and the effect of of marijuana is different. So you might feel high right away after ingesting or, you know,smoking or ingesting gummies or something like that.
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But unlike alcohol, it doesn’t go straight into your blood. Is that right?
Speaker
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Right. It goes straight to your brain. So you’ll feel impaired right after you’re driving or right after you’ve smoked and you may be driving and have an accident at that time and then get the blood results back and have a really low level of THC in your system because it hasn’t had a chance to get in your blood yet. So there’s no correlation.
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You may have a really high level of THC in your blood, but be feeling completely sober and maybe you just had the accident because it was icy out and it did not have anything to do with being under the influence of marijuana.
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So there’s no correlation between the numbers that come back in your blood for THC and being too impaired to drive.
Speaker 2
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The police are going to try to make that connection. And that is where most people would not know this information and might get unfairly accused and convicted of something.
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And that’s where they’re going to need a lawyer. So they need to get in touch with you. Right?
Speaker 1
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Right. And we will include a link in the description where they can call text or chat with a member of my team any time, day or night.
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