To deal with the is­sue of dri­ving while high on mar­i­jua­na, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said he is draft­ing leg­is­la­tion to al­low po­lice of­fi­cers to use a “dru­gal­yser” — a de­vice to al­low po­lice to mea­sure the pres­ence of the drug in a dri­ver’s sys­tem.

Al-Rawi made the state­ment as the first pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na was held at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al gave an hour-long pre­sen­ta­tion at the start of the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion which in­clud­ed sta­tis­tics, de­f­i­n­i­tions and a di­a­gram show­ing the ef­fect of mar­i­jua­na on the brain.

“Mar­i­jua­na has short and long-term ef­fects on the brain. While most be­hav­iour­al and phys­i­o­log­i­cal ef­fects re­turn to nor­mal af­ter three to five hours, some ef­fects can last up to 24 hours or longer,” the di­a­gram stat­ed.

Al-Rawi said mar­i­jua­na af­fects the brain’s pari­etal lobe and caus­es a slow re­ac­tion time in users, ef­fects the cere­bel­lum and af­fects a user’s mo­tor, and hand-eye co-or­di­na­tion, and dri­ving skills and al­so af­fects the frontal lobe and caus­es a lack of con­cen­tra­tion.

“We are go­ing to come to some­thing about how we treat with the is­sue when we are reg­u­lat­ing it in our so­ci­ety be­cause we have a breathal­yser and I am draft­ing the law for a dru­gal­yser, in case you want to know, be­cause we are go­ing to have per­sons sub­mit­ted to giv­ing sam­ples for drug analy­sis on the road,” Al-Rawi said.

In 2015 reg­u­la­tions were in­tro­duced in the Unit­ed King­dom al­low­ing po­lice to stop dri­vers and test them to see if they were dri­ving while on drugs.

The leg­is­la­tion al­lows po­lice to use a mouth swab and a portable drug analyser not much big­ger than a pen to test to see if dri­vers had ex­ceed­ed lim­its set for the pres­ence of eight il­le­gal drugs, in­clud­ing cannabis and co­caine, as well as eight pre­scrip­tion drugs.

Dru­gal­y­sers are al­so used in Fin­land and Switzer­land.

Al-Rawi said chron­ic mar­i­jua­na smok­ing will stay for more than two months in a user’s sys­tem.

“If you are a chron­ic smok­er or you are chron­i­cal­ly on mar­i­jua­na it is go­ing to stay in your sys­tem for much longer and be de­tect­ed much eas­i­er, if you are not a reg­u­lar user you are look­ing at one to three days, for a chron­ic smok­er you can find it up to 77 days af­ter you have used it in your sys­tem. So this is some­thing to be mind­ful of,” he said.

Al-Rawi called for analy­sis on va­p­ing on the brain of ado­les­cents, say­ing that va­p­ing may al­so cause bronchial prob­lems known as “pop­corn lungs”.

He al­so warned of the use of mar­i­jua­na brown­ies.

Apart from the ef­fect mar­i­jua­na can have on the brain, Al-Rawi al­so es­poused its med­ical ben­e­fits.

“(CBD) re­lieves pain, in­flam­ma­tion has an­tipsy­chot­ic ef­fects, it re­duces anx­i­ety, it helps to fight can­cer, it helps to re­lieve nau­sea, it may treat seizures and oth­er neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders, low­ers in­ci­dents of di­a­betes, pro­motes car­dio­vas­cu­lar health,” Al-Rawi said.

“For those of you who vol­un­teer or have had per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence in man­ag­ing pa­tients who are dy­ing from can­cer, you know that this is a se­ri­ous is­sue for a num­ber of peo­ple,” Al-Rawi said.

“Can cannabis use as­sist with med­ical con­di­tions? Ob­vi­ous­ly yes,” he said.