Did you know that you can elect not to participate in a Field Sobriety Tests? If you do decide to participate in one, the police will run you through a series of actions to decide whether you’re sober or not. Click on the infographic below for more information in Field Sobriety Tests.
The Riverside County District Attorney’s office announced that it has received over $490,000 from the California Office of Traffic Safety to assist in prosecuting drugged driving cases. The grant will be used by the Vertical Prosecution Unit to retain additional DDAs to prosecute drug impaired driving cases. According to a statement by the District Attorney’s office. The Vertical Prosecution Unit’s goal is to reduce “drug impaired traffic fatalities and injuries by holding drug-impaired drivers accountable.”
California aggressively prosecutes drug-impaired and alcohol-impaired driving, and Riverside County is no exception. Tough laws designed to decrease the number of fatalities from DUI accidents carry severe penalties for drivers who are convicted for drug-impaired driving or alcohol-impaired driving. Alcohol-impaired driving fatalities increased during 2013 according to the California Office of Traffic Safety. The percentage of drivers killed in accidents who tested positive for legal and/or illegal drugs has been increasing every year since 2006; therefore, law enforcement agencies are cracking down on driving under the influence of drugs (DUID) cases throughout California.
Back in 1984, a scientist at Clemson University named
John W. Huffman began studying the interaction between drugs and brain receptors. He and his colleagues created 460 synthetic cannabinoid compounds that resemble THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.
Why? The answer was harmless enough. The brain receptors play a role in regulating pain and inflammation in the body, and as Huffman and his team tested their cannabinoid compounds on lab animals, the results were promising—some of their compounds succeeded in reducing pain, inflammation, and certain skin cancers. In fact, one of his compounds, JWH-133 (named after Huffman), shrank brain tumors and regressed non-melanoma skin cancers in mice—a very exciting discovery for Huffman.
Then things started to go south, as Huffman had feared. He published his positive findings, but the chemical formulas, some very easy to reproduce with common substances, fell into the hands of the wrong people and the fake marijuana craze had begun.Read More
Loose marijuana laws are creating chaos in the Golden State. With San Jose communities organizing “Weed for Vote” programs and the water shortage in Northern California, people are left to wonder what will happen if no regulations are passed.
Since 1996, California has been the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use. Proposition 215, or the Compassionate Use Act, was written to maximize the legalization of marijuana and restrict regulations. In 2003, the Medical Marijuana Program Act gave guidelines on how much marijuana a typical patient could possess but gave physicians the ability to prescribe larger doses.Read More
Three suspects face drug charges for the criminal possession of heroin and cocaine tied to actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s death in early February. All three men have pleaded not guilty.
According to a CNN news article, one of the defendant’s bail was set to nearly a quarter of a million dollars. He was arraigned on three counts of heroin possession.Read More
The War on Drugs, four decades and billions of dollars later, has largely been a failure, with thousands of Americans serving harsh sentences for low-level drug crimes.
In an earlier post, we wrote that the U.S. Justice Department made a major change in its drug sentencing policy in order to curtail taxpayer spending and reduce overcrowding in prisons.Read More
Since former president Ronald Reagan declared a War on Drugs in 1971, the U.S. has waged a decades-long battle against drug use. The Drug Enforcement Administration was established to handle the drug problem, D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) was implemented to teach school kids to just say no, and mandatory minimum sentences were imposed for drug offenders.
But today, after years of effort and billions of dollars, many are calling the War on Drugs a failure. Among them is U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.Read More
California, like many states in the country, has faced rising prison populations in recent years. The reason for overpopulation in our prisons is debatable. Some will say there are more criminals, and others will say that harsher sentencing has become the norm. Regardless of the actual reason, states have had to figure out what to do with the surplus of prisoners. In California, according to a story in the Sacramento Bee, one method has been to divert drug criminals from state facilities to local jails.Read More
The topic of driving under the influence has been very much in the public eye recently. First, there was the issue facing the U.S. Supreme Court regarding whether or not warrantless, nonconsensual blood draws in cases of suspected DUIs are legal (by the way, the Supreme Court ruled they are not). Then, with some states legalizing the use of marijuana, there have been questions about the impact that change would have on DUIs. Recently, there has also been the question of how states can legally prove a driver’s intoxication when it comes to marijuana.Read More
The raid took place in May 2011. Narcotics agents went undercover, obtained medical marijuana cards and acted like customers at three dispensaries. In connection to these raids, nine people ended up getting arrested.Read More
