on drugs, like say you get hurt or something, (and dont have anything on you) can they do anything like arrest you or something for being on drugs? example: you are on acid and your friend is driving and gets into a car crash and you go to the hospital. what would happen in terms of legal stuff?
i dont know... severe enough to send someone to the hospital. say the one tripping breaks his leg or something.
it doesnt matter i just want to know what would happen if you were to go to the hospital for some type of injury if you were high on some kind of illegal drug
They won't arrest you for having it in your system If they find out about it, they may send you to mandatory rehab, especially if they think that the drugs caused the injury or hospital visit in the first place.
im not asking about the driver. i'm asking about the passenger who gets hurt and goes to the hospital, while high on an illegal drug. can someone else post in this thread?
Dude....questions. Ok, here is the deal. Unless this person is the cause of the accident then that person may be subject to blood tests that could be used aginst them in court later on. However, an ER doctor is not going to pull a cop into the room and say this person is on drugs. It falls under doctor - patient confidentially stuff. Again if the cop is like, this person is at fault usually if someone dies as a result then yes you are fucked. Besides it's very hard to prove someone is on acid once the evidence is gone. It's also out of your system in like 3 days. So any tests of that kind done later don't matter. However, a standard drug screen does not test for LSD either. As I understand but I am not a lawyer, thank God.
Besides, if you ask your doctor about something in a hypothetical kind of way. They are obligated to tell you. So, if they ask you a question that you are uncomfortable in answering you can speak to the doctor alone and confirm that you are protected. However, like I said they only thing an ER doctor wants to do is get you out of their ER. The only way they can do that is to either admit you into another area of the hospital or release you on your own.
I have three different stories regarding this subject. Keep in mind I'm in canada and this may not apply other places. When I shattered the end of my finger, the first thing I did (after wrapping a towel around it) was roll a dozen joints, and drove to town (about 10 miles then) while smoking two of them. They froze my finger and clipped the bone and cleaned it all up and such. They asked me if I wanted some pain killers, I said no, I just smoked a couple of joints and as soon as I leave I'll be smoking some more... They laughed and said "okay"... no problems... When my daughter was being born, and I was in the pre-delivery room pacing around like mad and being jittery as fuck, the doc came in and did a quick exam of my partner, took a look at me and said, "Tom, I really think you should go smoke a joint and try to relax"... I sorta snapped and said, I just did and this is about as relaxed as I'm going to get... He laughed and suggested smoking another one anyways... no problems... Last one... I had a buddy who had an epileptic fit at my place and I had to call the ambulance for him. After waiting around the hospital for a while (and he became conscious) the doctor came and asked me if he had smoked anything before hand... I said no, he doesn't smoke (true), but i had smoked a couple while he was there and he may have got some secondhand. The doctor pointed out that you should be careful smoking weed around epileptics and that was it... To the best of my knowledge, the only time there would be a problem is if the reason the person went in, was for an overdose of something (which of course isnt an issue with smoking weed).
its like being under the influence, as long as you are not harming anyone else or putting them in unnecessary risk (ie, the driver) it doesnt matter what you do to your body. of course, if they try to say the passenger was driving, you better hope the passenger left some dna not on the drivers side. i have a friend who remembers crawling into the back seat to sleep, totally trashed, and woke up being shaken by the guy whos car it was, accusing him of driving. he has a broken back, bleeding on the brain, and multiple other injuries, but the guy whos car it was had broken ankles. they went off the road and fell about 8 ft. pretty sure anyone in the front seat would have broken ankles, and anyone horizontal in the back seat would be fucked up like our friend. they have to wait for dna to come back to figure out who bled all over the front seat. drink at home people, seriously.
Doctors typically have more of a heart than police. If your injury was caused by your drug use then they may refer you to treatment but they do not benefit from trying to get you in trouble with law enforcement.
If the driver gets into an accident and you get hurt why would you get in trouble? They wouldn't even test you for drugs. They would try to make sure you don't die.
When a doctor is about to treat a person, knowing what drugs they have in their system should be a first step, as adverse drug combination reactions can and do occur.
Okay fine valid point but that's not what the OP was asking about. He wanted to know about the legal repercussions. If the passenger was high but not endangering others then I doubt the doctors would care.
Doctors are bound by doctor-patient confidentiality and it is illegal for them to disclose anything to anyone, including law enforcement, unless you're endangering yourself or someone else.