2026 Roadwise Award Nominee: Chesapeake Region Safety Council

The Roadwise Award honors education, training, research, tools, and public safety initiatives that improve our ability to recognize cannabis impairment, prevent impaired driving, and make decisions based on actual risk rather than assumptions about cannabis use.

The Chesapeake Region Safety Council's (CRSC) nomination for this award sets a powerful standard for its intended impact. The Impairment Education and Recognition program is tackling one of the most difficult challenges in cannabis safety: how do we protect the public from genuine impairment without treating the mere presence of cannabis as proof that someone is impaired? And building community bridges to do it.

That distinction is particularly important for medical cannabis patients. Traditional blood, urine, and oral fluid drug tests can identify cannabis or its metabolites without establishing whether a person is currently impaired. Cannabis compounds may remain detectable after intoxicating effects have ended. A medical cannabis patient can test positive even when their cannabis use occurred well before a traffic stop, workplace incident, or other event.

Physical roadside tests can create another challenge for both patients and law enforcement. Standardized assessments often rely on balance, coordination, walking, eye movement, and the ability to follow physical instructions. Patients living with movement disorders, neurological conditions, chronic pain, injuries, or other physical limitations may perform differently on these tests even when cannabis is not causing impairment.

A positive cannabis test or poor performance on a physical assessment can influence a drugged driving investigation, an employment decision, or how a workplace accident is evaluated. More accurate ways of distinguishing cannabis use from cannabis impairment can strengthen public safety while reducing the risk that a patient is penalized because a test detects previous cannabis use or a medical condition affects physical performance.

CRSC has created a remarkable real-world environment for examining that problem. The 103-year-old nonprofit conducted its first Cannabis Use Workshop in 2019 and has since developed the program into free Impairment Education and Recognition training for workers, law enforcement professionals, government officials, safety professionals, employers, contractors, supervisors, and cannabis consumers.

The program combines classroom education with direct observation. The students learn about emerging impairment assessment technologies, standardized law enforcement sobriety testing, signs and symptoms of impairment (of any kind, such as substance use, fatigue, medical conditions, etc.) along with information regarding Cannabis use. Workplace and Highway Safety students, law enforcement officers, technology partners, and participating consumers engage throughout the day.

What makes the program especially compelling is the participation of volunteer cannabis consumers. Consumers use their own products through different routes of administration and at different levels, including normal use and self-determined impairment. Participants discuss dosage, strains, medical benefits, route of administration, impairment, and the ability to work and drive after use.

Drug Recognition Experts conduct evaluations at different points during the program, giving participants an opportunity to watch performance and behavior change over time. Students can shadow law enforcement during the assessment process, while technology partners demonstrate oral, ocular, psychomotor, and other approaches to evaluating possible impairment.

Additionally, cannabis consumers observe other consumers as recognizable signs of intoxication emerge. Seeing those changes firsthand can challenge the persistent myth that experience with cannabis, personal tolerance, or confidence behind the wheel makes it safe to drive while high.

That makes the program valuable in both directions. Cannabis use should not automatically be treated as evidence of impairment, but genuine cannabis impairment should not be dismissed or minimized either. CRSC gives cannabis consumers, law enforcement, employers, safety professionals, and technology developers an opportunity to explore the difference together.

The program also creates a rare setting for evaluating new impairment technologies wihth real people and real cannabis use. That kind of hands-on learning may help improve how impairment is recognized in the future, with implications not only for roadway safety but also for workplace testing, post-accident investigations, employment decisions, and protections for medical cannabis patients.

CRSC currently conducts the free program eight to ten times each year in Maryland and is planning for expansion.

The Chesapeake Region Safety Council nomination sets an ambitious precedent for the Roadwise Award. It brings together patient protection, consumer education, impaired driving prevention, law enforcement training, workplace safety, emerging technology, and real-world observation around a problem that cannabis policy has struggled with for decades: identifying actual impairment accurately.

Learn more about The Chesapeake Region Safety Council:

Website: Chesapeake Region Safety Council