A person who uses recreational marijuana cannot win a Michigan driver’s license restoration or clearance appeal. Plenty of people will not like to hear this, and will try to argue things like, “marijuana is legal now,” or, “it’s not fair,” but the simple fact is that the recreational use of marijuana is a 100% complete bar to winning back your driver’s license. From our perspective, as Michigan driver’s license restoration lawyers, the legalization of recreational marijuana has really been a nightmare that has required us to do a lot of explaining, as I’ll do in this article.
Let’s begin with the most foundational, basic proposition of all: License appeals are about sobriety. More specifically, they are all about proving that you’re sober, by the legally required standard of “clear and convincing evidence.” Before we get to that, however, it’s critical to understand what sobriety really is, and, just as important, what it isn’t. At it’s most basic, sobriety, in the context of license appeal cases, is the choice of a person to permanently refrain from the use of any and all intoxicating, mind-altering, or potentially habit-forming substances.
When someone has had his or her driver’s license revoked after racking up 2 or more DUI’s, the state concludes that he or she is a demonstrated risk when it comes to drinking and driving. We’ll examine the law later in this piece, but the bottom line is that the law makes very clear that anyone who has lost his or her license for multiple DUI’s can’t get it back until they prove that they no longer drink or use any other substances, and that are committed to never drinking (or using any other drugs) again. Whatever else, it’s a simple fact that people who no longer drink are zero risk to ever drive drunk again.