As police warn about the dangers of marijuana use and getting behind the wheel, it seems driving high is nothing new for hundreds of thousands of Ontarians.
A new study by the Canadian Automobile Association finds as many as 1.9-million Ontario residents have, at some point, driven after smoking marijuana. The survey also finds a little over half feel they drive worse when high than when sober.
OPP Sergeant Kerry Schmidt says police are ready to enforce the laws on impaired driving when the use of recreational marijuana becomes legal on October 17th. Says Schmidt, "We have been dealing with impaired driving by drugs and by alcohol for years already. We have drug recognition evaluators and we have our standard field sobriety testing officers."
Other than relying on officer observations, police don't have a physical test for the presence of marijuana or any way to tell how much of the drug's activing ingredient, THC, a user has ingested.
Schmidt says police will continue to base their actions on a person's ability to operate a motor vehicle and if that ability is impaired.