Pubdate: Wed, 30 Nov 2016
Source: Goderich Signal-Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2016 Goderich Signal-Star
Contact: http://www.goderichsignalstar.com/letters
Website: http://www.goderichsignalstar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1735
Author: Darryl Coote
Page: 4

MEDPOT USER SAYS SHE WAS WRONGFULLY CHARGED WITH DUI

Linda Birks was only a handful of kilometers away from her new home in
Port Albert when she became caught in a thunderstorm and drove her car
off the road, down a ditch and into a hydro pole.

The trip was supposed to have been the beginning of a new start, she
said.

Her plan that night of Aug. 17 was to drive her car, loaded with most
of her belongings, the two hours to her new apartment, unload and then
head back to Guelph to care for her 10 cats and four ferrets that were
waiting for her.

Instead, the 58-year-old would spend the night in a jail cell at the
Walkerton OPP detachment, charged with driving a motor vehicle while
impaired by a drug, specifically marijuana.

However, she claims she never took the drug that day and says she was
targeted because she is a medical marijuana user.

For over a year Birks has been taking one gram of medical marijuana
daily for chronic pain caused by degenerating disks in her back, among
other issues, she told The Signal Star in an interview from her
apartment near Goderich.

"What I have to do is, basically, if I'm not going anywhere is have a
few puffs off and on all day long so this way it maintains a certain
level in my blood stream and that is what gives you the long-term
benefits," she said.

However, on the day of her arrest she says she had not taken her
prescribed marijuana knowing that she'd have to drive later that evening.

"I was busy packing and sorting things and I loaded up the vehicle and
I decided to drive up around six o'clock; this way I could beat the
rush hour traffic and it would be nice and quiet when I came back
because it was close to a four-hour trip," she said.

She said her doctor had told her when he prescribed her the medicine
that if she plans to drive not to vape marijuana a minimum of four
hours before she gets behind the wheel, and this is a rule she said
she adheres to.

Dr. Danial Schecter, medical director and co-founder of the
Cannabinoid Medical Clinic in Toronto and the doctor who prescribed
medical cannabis for Birks, confirmed that this is what he tells his
patients.

"We tell our patients that it is not recommended to drive for at least
four hours after inhaling cannabis and for eight hours if they feel
'euphoria' or have ingested (instead of inhaled) cannabis," he wrote
to The Signal Star in an email.

Birks says that the police officer built a case against her once she
told him that she was a medical marijuana user.

"As soon as he found out I had a prescription for medical marijuana he
pricked my finger right then and there," she said.

However, the police disclosure on Birks' case, which Birks gave to The
Signal Star, does not mention that a sobriety test was performed at
the scene of the accident.

There are many other discrepancies between the court document and the
account Birks has given The Signal Star.

The disclosure also quotes Birks as telling the officer that she did
not have anything to drink that day. She says that's incorrect. She
told The Signal Star that she answered the officer saying she had had
a cooler several hours before driving during lunch that day.

Also, Birks asserts that she required the assistance of the officer
and a witness to open her door to exit the vehicle following the
accident while the disclosure states she was already free of the car
when the OPP arrived.

The officer's notes also say she had appeared wobbly and her speech
was "slow, slurred, deliberate" and with a "blank glazed stare in her
eyes" as reasons to suggest Birks was under the influence of a
narcotic. Birks accounts for those signs of impairment as having to do
with her wearing heeled sandals in a muddy area, suffering from
symptoms of shock, concussion and pain in her back and from
ill-fitting dentures.

She said she had "great difficulty" standing because of the conditions
of the field, and when paramedics arrived they suggested she go to a
hospital due to the possibly that she might have a concussion. She
declined the paramedics' suggestion because she had her pets back in
Guelph waiting for her, though she did agree that if her symptoms
worsened she'd go to the hospital as they suggested.

"So the police officer heard all this," she asserts.

Discrepancies aside, the issue comes down to whether she was impaired
at the time of the accident.

Following her arrest, Birks was taken to the OPP Walkerton detachment
where she was required to give a urine sample to a drug recognition
expert, who said "that there were grounds for Impaired by Drug
[charge]," reads the disclosure.

According to Dr. Schecter, this urine test is only qualitative and not
quantitative, "which means that it is impossible to know how much
cannabis is in your system."

In other words, it can register the presence of cannabis in one's
system, but not the quantity, which is a problem for medical marijuana
users who take the drug frequently enough for it to always be present.

"Your urine drug screen can be positive for days or weeks after having
last consumed cannabis, depending on how regularly the patient is
using cannabis," Dr. Schecter wrote. "Even blood work is difficult to
interpret as there is no standard number at which patients are
considered 'impaired.' "

The Walkerton crown attorney did not return The Signal Star's request
for comment.

Birks says that she was treated well by the arresting officer until
she told him she was a medical marijuana user.

"His demeanour and behaviour to me completely changed," she said.
"Treated me like a perp, didn't take anything I said to him about my
condition into consideration."

At the police station she said she was required to perform a sobriety
test, which she failed.

"I was extremely wobbly," she said. "I had shooting pains from the one
area of the vertebrae where the disk is almost completely gone and I
was in a tremendous amount of pain so I was having difficulty in
standing up, and every time I went to take a step I was scared my back
would give out."

She said she told the officers at the detachment about her medical
conditions, but "they didn't care."

She was then put into a cell, where, she asserts, she began to suffer
more acutely.

"When I got in there I started really having problems. I would try and
get up and walk and my back would give out and I would fall and I fell
into the steel door three times and I couldn't get my self back up,"
she said.

She said she lay on the floor sobbing from pain, and only after the
first time that she collapsed into the door did an officer come check
on her, but he did not provide any assistance.

She was released into the custody of her friend the following
morning.

She has been charged a $1,000 fine for the offence and a year's
suspension to her license.

She will have a criminal conviction if found guilty.

But she says she is fighting it.

However, Legal Aid Ontario has informed her that she is ineligible for
legal assistance because she is not facing incarceration if convicted.

Birks is also poor, living on disability and she says she can neither
pay the $1,000 fine or the fees of a lawyer.

If she is convicted, she said the charge would haunt her for longer
than the one-year suspension.

"It will affect my life for the rest of my life," she said. "And I
wasn't impaired and the accident was not cause by my inability to
operate that vehicle safely."

She says the charge will prevent her from driving for the foreseeable
future because she won't be able to afford the insurance.

According to Paul Wettlaufer, sales manager at Excalibur Insurance in
Mitchell, the criminal conviction could affect her for a minimum of
six years.

If convicted she will be dropped by her current insurer and have to go
to what is called a non-standard insurance company and though rates
vary these companies tend to have a higher base rate with a 50 per
cent surcharge.

The tool they use to measure what someone should pay for insurance is
a driver's abstract of their record.

This abstract will contain a person's impaired conviction for three
years, he said.

However, the conviction comes with a suspension, which must be
revealed to the insurance company for the next six years.

"There are two things at play in an impaired driving conviction: The
conviction itself, which stays with you for three years, and the
suspension of your driver's license," he said.

This, Birks said, will prevent her from driving, which will greatly
restrict her independence.

"I'm extremely upset and I'm not going to have my life totally
disrupted by something that is not true," she said.

What was supposed to have been a new start has now left her life in
"limbo," she said.

Without the ability to drive, she must rely upon friends and taxis
services for getting groceries and her medicine and she says she has
been forced to become something of a "hermit."

"I can't move forward with my life here until this is resolved in my
favour," she said.

Her next and fourth court appearance is Dec. 7.

"This has terribly disrupted my life beyond belief," she said. "And I
think it should be thrown out because it is a complete waste of tax
payer money."

She says she is currently considering taking legal action against the
OPP for how she was treated under their care.
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