Politics
Feds Would Develop ‘Impairment Standards’ For Marijuana And Other Drugs Under New Bipartisan Transportation Bill In Congress
Bipartisan leaders of a key House committee have released the text of transportation legislation containing provisions to require federal officials to study the issue of driving of driving under the influence of marijuana and other drugs and propose “evidence-based impairment standards.”
Reps. Sam Graves (R-MO) and Rick Larsen (D-WA), who are, respectively, the chair and ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, announced the new bill on Sunday.
The 1,005-page “Building Unrivaled Infrastructure and Long-term Development (BUILD) for America’s 250th Act” covers broad areas of transportation, including roads, bridges, rail and highway programs.
The proposal’s section on drug issues would require the secretary of transportation to collaborate with the heads of other relevant federal agencies to “study the effect that marijuana and polysubstance impairment has on driving” and to analyze measures for detecting and reducing impaired driving.
The federal officials would then need to “propose evidence-based impairment standards for marijuana or polysubstance use,” and the transportation secretary would need to provide Congress with a report describing progress on the effort.
Under a separate provision of the legislation, the secretary would be directed to establish a national drug involved crash data collection system.
Its duties would be to:
‘‘(A) collect standardized toxicology data from States for fatal and serious injury crashes;
(B) link crash data with medical, coroner, hospital, and emergency medical services records; and
(C) provide model protocols for specimen collection, testing, and reporting.”
Under that system, the Department of Transportation (DOT) could award grants to states assist with launching pilot programs for enhanced data collection and to support toxicology labs, specimen collection, training, data systems and data linkage.
In order to protect people’s privacy, the data would need to be “deidentified” before it is made publicly available, including through a report the transportation secretary would be required to provide to Congress that would “analyze trends, substance types, and geographic patterns collected under the system.”
The bill would require the department to spend $110 million to support the effort from Fiscal Years 2027-2031.
Additionally, the legislation would direct administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to submit a report to Congress on the status of the collaborative research effort to advance impaired driving prevention technology.
The announcement of the new bipartisan bill with impaired driving provisions comes days after DOT issued new guidance saying that truck drivers, airline pilots and other safety-sensitive workers still cannot use medical marijuana without punishment despite the Trump administration’s move to reschedule it.
“Marijuana use is not compatible with safety-sensitive functions,” the agency said on Friday.
Medical review officers (MROs) who receive drug test results indicating cannabis consumption cannot deem them to be negative for illegal substance use, even when an employee says it was the result of state-licensed medical marijuana, the department said.
“Currently, there is no instance when the MRO could verify a laboratory-confirmed marijuana positive drug test result as ‘negative’ when an employee claims the positive was caused by a State licensed marijuana product,” DOT said, explaining that even after rescheduling, medical marijuana dispensed in accordance with state law “does not constitute” a drug that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Last October, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy suggested President Donald Trump was “getting pressure” to reschedule cannabis—arguing that marijuana is “really addictive” and saying that policy reform around the issue sends a “dangerous” message.
“At a time when culture is pushing and celebrating the use of marijuana, we’re not talking about the risk,” Duffy said.
