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url: hMPp://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Marijuana-research-Is-the-limit-for-4233733.php#page-2
MJ Research: Is The Limit MJDUI Too High?
Some marijuana users continue to complain that Washington's new pot law creating a 5-nanograms-per-milliliter limit for active THC is too low of a DUI standard and that having a standard at all will unjustly criminalize medical marijuana users.
Well, they are in for some bad news.
Not only is the limit for a "per se" charge of driving under the influence in Washington not too low, but it might be too high to capture impaired drivers, according to recently released research conducted by a group in the National Institutes of Health.
Another study suggests driving by heavy users is impaired nearly a month after their most recent puff of cannabis. Oh, and, a companion study suggests marijuana may in fact be addictive ...
Well, they are in for some bad news.
Not only is the limit for a "per se" charge of driving under the influence in Washington not too low, but it might be too high to capture impaired drivers, according to recently released research conducted by a group in the National Institutes of Health.
Another study suggests driving by heavy users is impaired nearly a month after their most recent puff of cannabis. Oh, and, a companion study suggests marijuana may in fact be addictive ...
Will the bad news never end?
Science says the test is all wrong
Okay, one more time, with feeling:
Active THC, or its immediate derivative, the "equipotent monohydroxy compound," or "11-hydroxy-THC" or "11-OH-THC" – the active elements of marijuana that make you high – while not completely gone within hours of getting high, fall below the 5-nanogram limit within 24 hours.
For future reference, "THCCOOH" is the non-active residue of pot in the system, which sticks around a lot longer than active THC.
"With whole blood (testing), we haven't had anybody over five after 24 hours," said one of the nation's leading researchers on marijuana and its effects on people, with dozens of research papers under her belt.
Marilyn Huestis is a senior investigator in chemistry and drug metabolism at the Intramural Research Program under the National Institute on Drug Abuse and, thus, the National Institute of Health.
She added that almost no one tested at 5 nanograms of active THC after just a few hours, but she uses the 24-hour window just to round it all off. These results come from her group's most recent study released Jan. 2.
"A good proportion of even chronic daily users will be negative within the 24 hours and the remaining 15 (in the study) all were negative within three days except for seven people," who tested well below 5 nanograms at 30 days.
Again, that's "negative," not just under 5 nanograms.
Blood, not plasma
The first thing Huestis pointed out during her interview with us is that one of her studies used to argue against the 5-nanogram limit was a study done using plasma, the fluid part of blood that doesn't include red blood cells.
"THC doesn't get into red blood cells well at all," she said. And THC concentration in "plasma is about twice of what whole blood concentration is."
That study released in April of last year contained this alarming (to critics) conclusion:
"THC and THCCOOH can be detected in plasma for up to 30 days of monitored abstinence in chronic daily cannabis smokers." The study also showed higher levels of active THC in later time frames than just a few hours ...
But, none of that counts, because that's not the testing law enforcement will conduct – they do whole blood testing and not plasma testing.
Too high of a limit?
"The level of 5 nanograms per mil is pretty high," Huestis said. "We know that people are impaired at lower levels than 5, but the balancing act is trying to find a number that can reliably separate (the impaired from the not-impaired), which is almost impossible to do."
In a pair of studies published in the past year, Huestis' team found two troublesome results.
One, which we'll delve into later, showed that the brain does in fact adapt to marijuana much like it adapts to other addictive substances.
And, two, heavy users in the second study, when compared to occasional users at 7, 14 and 21 days of abstinence, showed "psychomotor impairment that shows they'd have a hard time driving."
"They showed some small improvement," she said. "but they were significantly impaired three weeks after use."
Science says the test is all wrong
Okay, one more time, with feeling:
Active THC, or its immediate derivative, the "equipotent monohydroxy compound," or "11-hydroxy-THC" or "11-OH-THC" – the active elements of marijuana that make you high – while not completely gone within hours of getting high, fall below the 5-nanogram limit within 24 hours.
For future reference, "THCCOOH" is the non-active residue of pot in the system, which sticks around a lot longer than active THC.
"With whole blood (testing), we haven't had anybody over five after 24 hours," said one of the nation's leading researchers on marijuana and its effects on people, with dozens of research papers under her belt.
Marilyn Huestis is a senior investigator in chemistry and drug metabolism at the Intramural Research Program under the National Institute on Drug Abuse and, thus, the National Institute of Health.
She added that almost no one tested at 5 nanograms of active THC after just a few hours, but she uses the 24-hour window just to round it all off. These results come from her group's most recent study released Jan. 2.
"A good proportion of even chronic daily users will be negative within the 24 hours and the remaining 15 (in the study) all were negative within three days except for seven people," who tested well below 5 nanograms at 30 days.
Again, that's "negative," not just under 5 nanograms.
Blood, not plasma
The first thing Huestis pointed out during her interview with us is that one of her studies used to argue against the 5-nanogram limit was a study done using plasma, the fluid part of blood that doesn't include red blood cells.
"THC doesn't get into red blood cells well at all," she said. And THC concentration in "plasma is about twice of what whole blood concentration is."
That study released in April of last year contained this alarming (to critics) conclusion:
"THC and THCCOOH can be detected in plasma for up to 30 days of monitored abstinence in chronic daily cannabis smokers." The study also showed higher levels of active THC in later time frames than just a few hours ...
But, none of that counts, because that's not the testing law enforcement will conduct – they do whole blood testing and not plasma testing.
Too high of a limit?
"The level of 5 nanograms per mil is pretty high," Huestis said. "We know that people are impaired at lower levels than 5, but the balancing act is trying to find a number that can reliably separate (the impaired from the not-impaired), which is almost impossible to do."
In a pair of studies published in the past year, Huestis' team found two troublesome results.
One, which we'll delve into later, showed that the brain does in fact adapt to marijuana much like it adapts to other addictive substances.
And, two, heavy users in the second study, when compared to occasional users at 7, 14 and 21 days of abstinence, showed "psychomotor impairment that shows they'd have a hard time driving."
"They showed some small improvement," she said. "but they were significantly impaired three weeks after use."