Blacklocks- Drugged Driving’s Common
“There was widespread agreement that cannabis impaired driving is common among those in their social networks,” said the report. “There is also widespread agreement it is more common than alcohol impaired driving. While driving impaired was not condoned, participants typically believed cannabis does not have the same impact.”
“In Canada rates of daily use are high,” wrote researchers. “As an example the 2023 Canadian Cannabis Survey suggested 25 percent of Canadians who reported using cannabis in the last year further reported daily or almost daily use.”
Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Roll Another Number For the Road
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DjAT41QtAo
Drugged driving can be deadly, even with just marijuana.
The other issue with Marijuana is the length of time it remains in your system.
For pilots such as myself, if I were to smoke a joint, I must not fly as pilot in command for 28 days. That is how long the effects can last.
I am sure someone will smoke a joint one evening and think they are fit to drive the next morning. I find that very disturbing.
For me, I have never touched the stuff and never will.
The only solution is 15 minute cities and self driving overlord cars.
Except … I don’t want to ride mass transit with potheads either … because today’s pot doesn’t make one mellow … it triggers every psychosis laying dormant in their brains.
…and the safety Karens go screaming to the state to save them from a non-existent threat, as usual.
Once again: having THC in your system does not mean you are ‘drugged’. There’s no evidence of MJ legalization causing a surge of accidents or any other problems. You lost, build a bridge, get over it. We are going to legalize them all.
I have direct experience of loss caused by marijuana use by a driver. Its common and easy to be ignorant and assume no such thing happens — after all, up until it occurred, I would have also been of the same opinion.
But trust me, it does.
I’m still all for legalization, but nothing should be legalized if there is not a good and mandatory field sobriety check in the event of a traffic accident and higher penalties in the event of injury, death, or other losses caused by the irresponsible driver.
So why does Transport Canada say 28 days from Marijuana use to flying ?
On 1 side, you have police who believe that if they can detect thc 28 days later they should lock them up. On the other side you have the very real problem of drug driving.
I dont even know if there is real data, ie x hours after smoking or consuming it still has an affect.
I dont use drugs but I assume you are actually safe at sometime between 1 hour and the 28 day measurable limit.
Spectrometry breath analyzers are being developed to detect stoned drivers but until they are widely available you are free to risk other people’s lives.
Courts don’t mind if you kill a bunch of people as long as you say it wasn’t your intent.
Meh.
Drunk Driver.
Stoned Driver.
Neither have killed as many other people as Stupid Driver.
Stupid for the win.
Unfortunately, while its easy to test for (just look for them alone in the car wearing a mask, for example) stupid isn’t illegal. Driving while stoned should be, but is harder to detect. One option…any injury accident of any sort, call a judge, get a warrant, drug test the driver. Maybe hold the results pending the investigation so the results don’t drive the investigation. But then they can be used to escalate the criminal or civil penalty for any damages or injuries (or deaths) that occurred.
“Investigations on the residual effects of cannabis on executive functioning show that recently abstinent cannabis users (7 hours to 20 days) may experience impairment in certain aspects of executive functioning. Attention, concentration, inhibition and impulsivity may or may not continue to be impaired during the interval associated with the elimination of THC and its metabolites from the brain. Decision-making and risk-taking capabilities have not been thoroughly studied during this period, but a single study by Whitlow et al. (2004) suggests that these abilities are impaired”.
“Cannabis appears to continue to exert impairing effects in executive functions even after 3 weeks of abstinence and beyond. While basic attentional and working memory abilities are largely restored, the most enduring and detectable deficits are seen in decision-making, concept formation and planning. Verbal fluency impairments are somewhat mixed at this stage. Similar to the residual effects of cannabis use, those studies with subjects having chronic, heavy cannabis use show the most enduring deficits”.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3037578/
John Robertson @ 12.10, what if you combine stupid with pot…….