1) develop a “roadside test” like a Breathalyzer that will accurately measure pot in the system, AND come up with reasonable standards for acceptable legal levels.”
Alcohol was relegalized without a roadside test. There are several drugs for which they do not have roadside tests to indicate that one has had enough of the particular substance. In fact, alcohol is the only drug for which we have set maximum levels that one can have in his blood and drive. People get DWIs for all sorts of different drugs though, including marijuana, even though they don't have have some test that can determine intoxication or that one has ingested enough to become intoxicated. If the officer feels that a person is intoxicated, he might have the person blow in his portable breath test, but he's certainly going to try to ask the appropriate questions and have the person do field sobriety tests. Now they are training officers to be drug recognition experts, DREs, who can not only recognize impairment but they are pretty good at guessing which drug someone is impaired on. These tests are usually recorded on video now and those suspected of driving while intoxicated on something other than alcohol are required to have blood or urine screens done. At court the judge (or jury) will listen to the testimony of the officers involved, including the DRE who did the special tests if it is someone other than the arresting officer. The court will watch the video tapes and they'll look at the drug screen results. They'll convict almost every time, just like they do with alcohol DWIs. Most people will go ahead and plead guilty because the potential punishments are always a lot worse than what people are offered in plea negotiations and most don't want to risk taking the case to trial and getting a harsher sentence for wasting the court's time. It happens all the time already.
I think most people who want to smoke pot are already smoking it. If they're the kind of jerks who would get really stoned and drive, they're already doing it. The precious few who want to smoke pot but don't because it is illegal and not because of all the other good reasons not to smoke pot have already shown that they are law abiding people with some self control. They're probably less likely to do things like smoke pot and drive than those who already smoke it.
“2) Ban 3rd party lawsuits from injuries related to pot use.
ie...Suing the employer because an employee injured someone or himself while having pot in their system.”
That's nonsense. We haven't done that for alcohol, and it's a lot more prone to causing accidents than pot. It impairs people more.
“Give it up, will never happen.”
I bet it does happen. I doubt it happens anytime soon, but I could see it happening in fifteen or twenty years, maybe sooner, maybe a little later. The percentage of people who think it should be legal and regulated similar to alcohol has been steadily growing over the years. The most recent surveys put the percentage for legalization at around forty percent and since the nineties it's been increasing by about one point a year on average. Sooner or later the majority will be for it and we'll start hearing a lot more serious talk about legalization from Washington. I think we'll need to see a change of the guard up there though to people born in the second half of the 20th Century. Right now our most powerful lawmakers tend to be people in their late sixties and seventies who came of age before marijuana use took off in this country and they tend to be more strongly opposed to it on average than younger folks. When most of these geezers are replaced I don't think it will be long before we see marijuana become legal. By then the majority will probably be for it. We'll probably have millions of old retired people that smoke pot that we don't really want to arrest (we have a couple of hundred thousand of those 65 and older now according to government stats but that number is growing and will explode as Baby Boomers retire). The whole debate is going to change over the next couple of decades. It's changing now.
>That's nonsense. We haven't done that for alcohol, and it's a lot more prone to causing accidents than pot. It impairs people more.<
It doesn't matter that the pot caused, or didn't cause, the accident. If it was in their system it gives a lawyer the legal opening to sue the employer.
The reason you see all the companies going to zero tolerance drug policies is because the liability insurance companies charge them a fortune if they don't have one.
The difference with alcohol is you can smell it on their breath and see rather easily if someone had too much. That isn't the case with pot, plus there is a cheap, instant test for alcohol.
I couldn't care less that someone smokes pot at home on the weekend but the company insurance policy demands that you have zero tolerance rules. The reason is lawsuits. You may not like that fact, but it's still a fact.