Volunteers get high to help California police spot pot users
Even though recreational marijuana is legal in California, most people probably wouldn't be comfortable smoking around police officers. But that's exactly what Edson Villegas volunteered to do, CBS Los Angeles reports.
Villegas took part in a "green lab" to help officers, prosecutors and toxicologists identify signs of impairment as drugged driving becomes a growing problem on roads.
"Approximately 75 percent of the DUI arrests that I make nowadays are drug impaired -- more specifically to cannabis than alcohol," said Glendale Police Officer Bryan Duncan.
The volunteer users took field sobriety tests at the beginning of the evening, then went into a tent and smoked marijuana. When they went back and took the same field sobriety tests, officers could see if there were any changes in their mental or physical abilities.
See also: Girl Scout sells more than 300 boxes of cookies at San Diego marijuana dispensary
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday February 15 2018, @08:10PM (1 child)
He didn't say that those 75% of DUIs were all cannabis, just that cannabis was more than alcohol. It could be 50% of the drug impairment is something else entirely.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday February 16 2018, @01:46AM
He also didn't say ANY of the DUIs were due to impairment. He might just station himself by a dispensary and arrest any leaving customers he doesn't like the look of. Easy way to make quota, seeing how as marijuana metabolites dissipate slowly enough that a regular smoker is pretty much guaranteed to fail a blood test regardless of actual intoxication level.