Massachusetts Guv Seeks Bill on Stoned Driving

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker says he's frustrated by lawmakers’ inaction more than five years after the legalization of recreational marijuana, so he is making a second attempt to address stoned driving.

He’s refiling a bill “equalizing alcohol and marijuana” that would make it easier to prosecute people who drive under the influence, according to a report in the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise.

“Unfortunately, our road safety laws have not caught up to the current public safety landscape with respect to impaired driving,” Baker said, announcing his legislation from the district courthouse in Worcester on Wednesday. “And it involves a significant number of incidents, crashes and tragedies."

The new bill is named for Thomas Clardy, a state trooper killed while conducting a traffic stop on the Mass Pike in Charlton in 2016 when a man who had THC in his system crashed into his cruiser.

A judge found that driver guilty of involuntary manslaughter during a 2019 bench trial, sentencing him to up to seven years in prison but acquitted him of driving impaired on marijuana at the time of the crash, the Sentinel & Enterprise wrote.

Worcester Superior Court Judge Janet Kenton-Walker ruled prosecutors failed to prove he was too impaired to drive safely, despite proof the medical marijuana patient had bought four cannabis joints at a dispensary roughly an hour before the crash and had THC in his system.

Source: Sentinel & Enterprise