Mega Study Says Driving After Smoking Pot is Dangerous

Driving impaired is dangerous?

I am shocked.

What the article misses is that while yes, a cop must have probable cause to suspect impairment, medical marijuana patients might not be physically able to perform the field sobriety tests. When this happens when one is under the influence of alcohol they can take a BAC test or a breathalyzer to prove they are not over the limit or impaired. Setting a standard level for cannabis doesn’t work. Many medical marijuana patients are above that 5 nanogram level and are not impaired. The provision in I-502 states that a 5 nanogram or higher level is automatic DUI regardless of whether impairment is shown. So for the patient who cannot perform a field sobriety test, such as someone with back problems who cannot stand on one foot or walk the line, this forces them to a blood test where they will undoubtedly be above 5 nanograms.This results in being charged with a DUI. We still need to hold people accountable for DUI, but it’s not as cut and dry as some would think.   

Will Jones is in part correct that, in situations where an officer suspects driving while under the influence of alcohol and the driver can’t do field sobriety tests (by the way, EVERYONE has the RIGHT to refuse to do those tests), a portable BAC can help them quickly dispell any suspicion (a portable BAC, as opposed to a BAC at the station, is also 100% voluntary). But what Will Jones doesn’t delve into is what happens when someone refuses to do field sobriety tests and a portable BAC. If there is other evidence of impairment–slurred speech, extreme difficulty finding license/insurance, bad driving–then the officer probably has probable cause for arrest. But if the officer didn’t see bad driving (pulled the person over for some other reason), and only has the odor of alcohol, that’s not probable cause to arrest. 

In the same way, if marijuana is legal and the officer doesn’t have any other reason to suspect impairment, then the lack of field sobriety tests or the marijuana equivalent of a BAC won’t matter because the officer won’t have probable cause.

Translation: The potheads want the absolute right to get stoned out of their gourd and then crawl into a car and drive.

Driving with a cell phone is dangerous too.  Maybe we should make cell phones illegal.  This nonsense is nothing more than a distraction.

If marijuana isn’t legalized soon, the knowledge of jury nullification is going to be so widespread that the government will have wished they never made it illegal.

In 1895 (Sparf v U.S. 156 U.S. 51, 1895), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that although juries have the right to ignore a judge’s instructions on the law, the jury should not be aware of it.

Well guess what?  More people than ever are aware of it and you can credit it to the war on marijuana.

 Talking on a cell phone while driving is illegal, here. The NHSTA says we should make it illegal everywhere. Even hands free.

Why did you not already know all this? It was all over the news.

…Could it be you were *too stoned*?

As long as cell phones are legal when not driving, they are going to be used while driving.  The only way to stop illegal cell phone use is to outlaw them for all uses.

It’s the same logic for smoking marijuana.  Either you use it responsibly or you don’t.

So you want to legalize drunken driving, then?

Driving is a privilege, not a right. 

I am less concerned about someone being forced to choose between two competing privileges, the right to drive and the right to have 5 nanograms of active THC in their bloodstream, than I am concerned about some stoned driver killing someone. If you want a medical marijuana card, maybe you need to give up driving if you can’t get through the day without 5 nanograms of THC in your blood stream.

I think you meant “Meta” study, and not “Mega” study?

Let’s make no mistake about this article and the issue of driving…doing anything else, anything, while driving is dangerous.  Talking to your mother who is riding as a passenger is dangerous.  In fact, I calculate that talking to mom while she is riding as a passenger is 97 percent more likely to cause an accident.  So what is the *&%$# point of this “research”?  Should we prohibit driving while on any medicine, even otc cough medicine?  How about we prohibit driving while living?  Would that make everybody, even the children, happy?  Life is not risk free, driving is not risk free, children are not risk free.  But as an old fart who has experienced both drunk drivers and buzzed drivers I can safely say I’ll take my chances with potheads on the road anyday rather than drunk folks! Buzzed drivers are s l o w.  They are the ones going 34mph in a 35 mph zone and they will be riding the breaks!  But chances are they are not the ones driving the wrong way on the expressway going 85 mph or worse, passed out at the wheel. 

Nice try at a straw man argument but I do not think you are fooling anyone.

Translation: FrequentPoster doesn’t care if marijuana is legalized because he gets satisfied sniffing glue.

So, take the bus if you’re stoned.

Exactly, take the bus.

You would rather risk a driver impaired by pot than one impaired by alcohol? I prefer to have neither on the road. Making it illegal to drive while under the influence of pot does not suddenly make drunk driving legal.

And yes, if you are taking cold medicine and it impairs your driving, that is illegal and you can get a ticket. If you are driving and talking to the point of distraction, you will be charged with reckless driving.

Life is not risk-free, but that doesn’t mean we should purposefully ADD risk just because we want to.

My point is that there are no safe “other things” you can be doing while driving. And of course we don’t want people driving while stoned, drunk, angry, mentally ill, without their glasses, gotta pee or poop, windshield dirty, kids raging, can I stop?  But again, should I be a little leary because this “MEGA” study comes out just before more than a few States are getting ready  to vote on legalizing marijuana this year?  I wonder who funded this “study”?  Did you know that having active hemmroids increases your chances of driving accidents by more than 187%?  Do you see how stupid these contrived “studies” are?  Do you see the purpose of such a timely fake report?  Thanks to big booze, big police and  big pharma I would guess.  You’ll see or hear more such crap in the coming months.  Someone is getting scared.   

Frequent Poster, that you or anyone else would think that legalization is about the right to maneuver a multi-ton vehicle while impaired is silly (to say the least). I have a right as an adult to drink alcohol. But that right does not extend to endangering others while doing so. And so it goes with marijuana.

But perhaps we’ve been punk’d. Maybe your coming off as a deluded prohibitionist offering a wacky opinion is just a Stephen Colbert-like shtick of yours designed to fake the rest of us out. Could be. I’m not sure.

But if you are serious, consider this: 1979 was the peak year for marijuana use in this country and yet there was no vehicular holocaust on the highways. How come?

Barry Lyons
Author, Letter to a Prohibitionist

As long as they don’t injure or kill bicyclists, what does it matter?

i read this study and how it was conducted and how they came to their conclusions……its a complete farce it just looks at accidents and if the driver had ANY THC in their system if they did it was concluded  that marijuana was the cause this is very biased study it hasn’t been peer reviewed and am sure it will be debunked……

this study was conducted by the US national highway safety institute http://members.iowatelecom.net/sharkhaus/driving.html

this study was conducted by drivers high on marijuana in a closed course in the Netherlands  http://www.hempfood.com/iha/iha01206.html

this study was conducted on states that have medical marijuana laws http://laist.com/2011/12/01/study_finds_safer_roads_are_a_side.php

it took me 7mins to find 3 studies  that trash this one

I don’t look at the bylines typically, so I have two ways of figuring out the article was written by Erica.  1) it has sloppy mistakes and glaring factual errors.  2) the subject is some really tenuous, awkward way in which womyn are supposedly disadvantaged, like bus routes being sexist.

Dude, I’ve smoked pot and driven, in my youth. There’s no fucking way I should have been on the road and had I caused an accident or been pulled over, I should have had the book thrown at me. I was lucky.

But go ahead, fight for your right to drive stoned. See how far MJ legalization goes with that attitude.

Bullshit. You and the rest of the potheads attack every practical method of keeping your stoned friends off the roads.

Not a “straw man” at all. The argument you made about cell phones works perfectly with alcohol. Bottom line is that you and your pothead friends want the legal right to drive stoned.

The pothead lobby wants the right to get totally whacked out, and still drive.

It’s a straw man argument because I don’t want to legalize drunken driving,  there was no mention of legalizing drunken driving, and you used it as a distraction.

The Prohibitionists will dig up anything to keep marijuana from being legalized.   If this keeps up the rule of law will be compromised as jurors learn about jury nullification and ask themselves why stop at legalizing pot.

How many other dumb laws are there waiting to be nullified?

Keeping marijuana illegal creates stoned drivers on the road.  The risk of being caught is much higher sitting still.

The safest place to smoke pot and not get caught is on the Interstate driving in the center lane and going with the flow of traffic.

As long as cell phones are legal when not driving, they are going to be used while driving.  The only way to stop illegal cell phone use is to outlaw them for all uses. It’s the same logic for smoking marijuana.  Either you use it responsibly or you don’t

The same logic applies to alcohol. So do you favor making alcohol illegal, or making drunken driving legal?

You’ve been smokin’ way too much of the good stuff!

“Potheads attack every practical method” of preventing stoned driving? Really? All legalizers are in agreement on at least one point: just as we have laws that prohibit driving while drunk, in a legalized marijuana world we’ll also have laws that prohibit driving while stoned. Where have you read that this is not the case? Seriously, I would appreciate it if you could provide me with a link to a news story revealing that marijuana legalizers are dismissive of driving laws. Thanks.

Again: government research tell us that 1979 was the peak year of marijuana use in this country and yet we have no reports telling us that marijuana users were creating havoc on the roads back then. How come?

By the way, what’s with your derogatory “pothead”? By the same token, does this also mean that every user of alcohol is a “drunkard”? I mean, it’s common knowledge that marijuana can be used moderately and responsibly* just as alcohol can be used moderately and responsibly. Are you actually saying that casual and responsible marijuana smokers really don’t exist and that only casual and responsible users of alcohol exist?

Barry

*If you’re implicitly suggesting that all marijuana users are just lazy-ass couch potatoes (when they’re not killing us on the highways), how do we explain Richard Branson’s phenomenal success? This is not a glib or flippant question: how come marijuana smoking hasn’t derailed him? And don’t forget that Carl Sagan, an astronomer of great renown, also smoked marijuana for almost all his entire adult life. It’s a serious question that demands a serious answer: if marijuana is bad — which, by the logic of the phrase, means it’s bad for everyone — why didn’t it cripple Sagan’s career as a scientist, writer, and lecturer?

You can’t quite keep to the tiopic, can you? Put down the bong and try to concentrate.

You can claim to oppose driving while stoned, but the potheads are stoutly resisting all practical enforcement mechanisms, such as blood level limits and testing.

Frequent Poster,

[You took off the reply function from your last comment (or it got disabled somehow).]

Thank you for clarifying your comment. I say this because you said nothing specifically about blood testing in your previous remarks (a search for the word “blood” doesn’t take me to any of your earlier posts).

Well, as it happens, I am opposed to blood testing but not for the reason you suspect.

In a smarter world, we would not test for levels of THC — or even for alcohol,
for that matter –  in a high or drunk driver. We would simply test for impairment. I hope you see the
crucial distinction here.

Think of this in another way: the degree to which a person is tired while driving is irrelevant. All that matters, for testing purposes, is that the person is impaired — whether from not getting enough sleep, from drinking too much alcohol or from smoking too much marijuana.

So do you appreciate this distinction, why testing for impairment is preferable to testing for trace elements of whatever drug in a person’s blood?

But you’re still wrong with regard to an earlier post. To quote you: “The potheads want the absolute right to get stoned out of their gourd and then crawl into a car and drive.” Really? I certainly don’t want this right. Who would? Does Richard Branson want this right? I doubt it.

 Which planet are you commenting from. Most people would like to remove the marijuana prohibition but the nonsense you spout makes it difficult to support. You drive stoned you should go to jail moron. Is it really meaningful to anyone else but you  what Richard Branson thinks on this issue? Doubt it.

 The safest place to drive drunk is in the middle lane so you can bounce off cars on each side of you instead of driving into a bridge abutment.

Once more, you and your dopehead friends want the right to drive stoned. You oppose all practical methods of enforcing the law.

During Prohibition when alcolhol was illegal, someone could stay in their apartment, drink alcohol, and no one would know.

With marijuana there is a smell that seeps into the next appartment.  This can lead to being caught and arrested.

In a black market where marijuana can be laced with PCP (angel dust) then yes, the drivers could be bouncing off of the abutment.

My point is the unintended consequences of making marijuana illegal is
to push users on to the road where they have a lower risk of being
caught.

Aren’t the pro-transit mob pretty much the same as the pro-pot head loons? What ever happened to smoking a spliff and taking the bus?

Tsk, tsk. Such anger. “What planet are you commenting from?” “Moron.” “Dopehead friends.”

I don’t understand what the problem is here. Testing for impairment is a well-known law enforcement tool. Do you and Kidforlife73, who seemed to suggest it’s “nonsense”, not know this? True, I did not go into detail to explain WHY testing for impairment is the preferred way for law enforcement to do its job (I can explain, if you want), but as I’ve said or implied from the start, I do support practical methods of enforcing the law, and testing for impairment is a terrific way to do it. Most police departments implicitly agree with me.

In the meantime, of course people caught driving drunk or high should be arrested. Did I suggest otherwise? No, I didn’t. Why would you or Kidforlife73 think that I don’t want to see drunk or high drivers arrested? That’s weird.

Again, I don’t know of any marijuana legalizer who wants “the right to drive stoned.” Like I say, you could be punking us all, because its sounds exactly like something Stephen Colbert would say. Hmm. ARE you punking me and other readers?

 I want marijuana legalized but yeah, I get  angry when arrogant condescending (I can explain, if you want) people  make moronic statements like driving stoned is the same as driving tired. Neither is good but they are not equivalent. Nobody but someone who lives on his own little planet  would make that kind of  assertion.  This kind of statement only makes people who might otherwise support lifting the prohibition think twice.

Advocating for only testing for impairment is bogus and you know it. You can refuse to comply with the test and any smart lawyer can get you off if law enforcement does not have the ability to otherwise measure the level of THC in a driver.

Your argument doesn’t hold water with the vast majority whose opinion is don’t drive stoned or drunk and you don’t have to worry about being tested. Its the majority that ultimately makes or changes laws on the part of the planet I live in so stop insulting them with your evasive tactics around driving stoned.

 Oh, by the way, your statement:

“Most police departments implicitly agree with me.”

Most  of law enforcement explicitly disagrees with you.

I don’t understand what the problem is here.

Maybe you should lay off the wacky weed, then. Anyone with a clear head can figure out what the problem is, Barry.

In the meantime, of course people caught driving drunk or high should be arrested. Did I suggest otherwise?

Without an objective measurement of consumption, arrests for driving stoned will not stand up in court. You know it, and so does everyone else. Until we have those measurements, and the solid legal backing for them, I think the chances that marijuana will be legalized are slim.

Which, by the way, I think will suit the states and the cartels just fine. The very first casualty of marijuana legalization would be any significant tax revenues. Much better to use the phony “medical dispensary” model, which still prohibits casual self-cultivation. Allow people to grow their own pot in the same way that they can make their own beer or wine, and both the cartels and state marijuana tax receipts pretty much disappear.

Over time, I think we’ll be facing more driving while stoned issues. You and your dopehead friends will be on one side of that, and everyone else will be on the other side, just as in the early days of the campaigns against drunken driving.

“Jose?” More like Cheech. Or was that Chong?

Another day, another Erica Fact!

The WAY that a person might be impaired is secondary to the fact THAT the person is impaired. That’s the crucial distinction here.

Driving while tired is a mega-huge problem on the roads. If you’re suggesting that driving while tired is not the same — is it worse? — than driving while high or drunk, I’d like to hear how you would argue that point, that driving while tired is less of a problem (if, in fact, that’s your point) than driving while high or drunk.

As for impairment tests, yes, police departments agree with me. A pulled-over driver asked to walk a straight line while touching his nose is an old-school example of impairment testing that’s still widely used. Standing on one foot is another. There is also a technique that involves counting out loud a certain series of numbers. Police departments use some or all of these impairment tests on a regular basis.

But there are also devices that function sort of like video games in which a drunk (or high or tired) person is asked to achieve a certain goal, such as using a gadget in which, with the use of a control knob, the person is asked to keep a cursor centered on the screen while the computer moves it away from the center at an increasingly rapid rate. Sober, well-rested people do well with this test. Drunk, high, or tired drivers do not.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecution contends that impairment tests are not widely used or respected by police departments. I rest my case with the above examples that conclusively demonstrate otherwise.”

Barry

Almost all states have implied consent laws.  Name one law enforcement agency in the U.S. that does not support implied consent laws for driving i.e., the right of law enforcement to force someone who refuses field sobriety testing to submit to blood/urine or other quantifiable verifiable testing methods. Can’t do it can you.

I rest my case

 ”Driving while tired is a mega-huge problem on the roads. If you’re
suggesting that driving while tired is not the same — is it worse? —
than driving while high or drunk, I’d like to hear how you would argue
that point, that driving while tired is less of a problem (if, in fact,
that’s your point) than driving while high or drunk.”

Well, Barry, driving tired does not include the purposeful ingestion of intoxicating substances for the intended purpose of altering your consciousness. 

The main historical offenders of driving tired are/were commercial truckers who are now subject to a high level of scrutiny via trip logs and the threat of losing their livelihoods. Once again, quantifiable and verifiable data for law enforcement.

Without the ability to test blood/urine/breath etc. all one would need to do is refuse a field sobriety test, get a good lawyer and take their chances. It is spurious arguments for not testing marijuana driving impairment that are either offered by abject idiot stoners or opposition trolls who don’t want the law to change. Which one are you?

My only point is that we could just as easily one day have the full legal backing of impairment testing without the need to measure consumption levels if law enforcement authorities wanted to sign off on this approach.

In other words, just as legalizers currently argue from various vantage points about how a legalized-marijuana world ought to work (think of the competing measures in various states on this point — me, I’m for the sell-it-like-alcohol model), I’m simply throwing into the ring the idea that, if we wanted to, we could do away with urine and blood testing altogether and rely exclusively on sophisticated impairment testing. That impairment testing is not the overriding law of the land at the moment doesn’t mean that it’s an inherently loony idea. I’m just simply considering an alternative (and better) way of catching malefactors on the road, an approach that is entirely legitimate and could one day be adopted as the law of the land  — but not, as you rightly point out, until we have solid legal backing for it. I agree on that point one hundred percent.

But, hey, maybe you’d like to read my book, “Letter to a Prohibitionist”. You can read all about it at Amazon. I would welcome a debate there: read my book, slam it (if you feel a slam is warranted), and we’ll continue the discussion there.

Barry

PS: To Kidforlife73 (who disabled the “reply” button), you wrote something that is true:

“Driving tired does not include the purposeful ingestion of
intoxicating substances for the intended purpose of altering your
consciousness.”

Yes. Exactly right. We have no disagreement on this whatsoever. But what does this distinction have to do with my larger point?
 

Barry, I am not interested in making some dopehead rich by purchasing his book about how great it is to smoke dope.

“My only point is that we could just as easily one day have the full
legal backing of impairment testing without the need to measure
consumption levels if law enforcement authorities wanted to sign off on
this approach. ”

Wait a minute Barry, I thought law enforcement already supported your so called approach-not so much, eh?

As for your larger point-I’m not sure what it is. If it is that “The WAY that a person might be impaired is secondary to the fact THAT the person is impaired.” That might be a correct interpretation on planet Barry but pushing that concept here will only aid in the continuing prohibition.

As for buying your book, Gawd damn if you aren’t an honest to goodness troll.