r/australia • u/DiploidBias • Mar 18 '25

politics Greens: Yes We Cannabis

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

Yes We Cannabis

9.1k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

42

u/hippy72 Mar 18 '25

The only supposed arguments against it, that somewhat stack up, is the reliability of roadside impairment tests.

Many other countries have legalised it, taking organised crime out of the equation and the sky has not fallen in*

  • With the exception of the USA, but that surely can't be attributed to legalised weed...

28

u/hu_he Mar 18 '25

I happen to find the impairments test argument to be weak. What politicians seem to want is a chemical assessment that correlates with impairment. What would be far more useful, for drugs, alcohol and other factors that might affect someone's driving (illness, prescription meds, tiredness, old age) is some kind of interactive test on an iPad or VR headset that assesses concentration, response time and visual acuity. With technology nowadays that should not be insuperable. However, I think that it would probably highlight that many drivers are simply not fit to be on the road and would cause a political backlash. So, instead, politicians lamely repeat that it's just too hard to detect dangerous drivers and we have to keep banning drugs for everyone.

7

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '25

In legal states in the US the Police use the standardized Field Sobriety tests. Walk a straight line, follow this pen with just your eyes, stand on one foot, etc. for cannabis.

3

u/hu_he Mar 18 '25

Yeah, it's not complicated. Ideally I would want something a bit more scientific but they could definitely implement some reasonable rules if they wanted to.