Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Medical Marijuana License As Possible Defense to DUI

Lawful users of medical marijuana are not automatically guilty of DUI, but they bear the burden of proving that the concentration of the drug in their system was insufficient to cause impairment.
 
Dobson v. McClennan, 2015 BL 382797, Ariz., No. CV-14-0313-PR, 11/20/15
 
    The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that lawful users of medical marijuana are not automatically guilty of DUI. The court did say that the patients bear the burden of proving that the concentration of the drug in their system was insufficient to cause impairment.
 
    The court did not accept the defendant's claim that it was not fair to put the burden on them because there is not a medically accepted threshold of marijuana impairment. Here, the court said, "[t]he risk of uncertainty in this regard should fall on the patients, who generally know, or should know if they are impaired and can control when they drive, rather than on the members of the public whom they encounter on our streets."
 

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