Addiction, Driving, Mental Health

Legal Marijuana Imperils Traffic Safety, Adds Mental Health Burden

By Dean Whitlock, a freelance writer from Thetford, Vermont, writes about safety as it relates to marijuana.  The article appeared in Vermont Digger on May 2, 2017.

The discussions of H.170, which would legalize possession and home-growing of small quantities of marijuana, have focused a lot on the danger to teenagers, which is appropriate since adolescents are in a stage of neural development that makes them much more likely to become addicted, develop mental health conditions, and suffer decreases in cognitive processing and memory retention. The problem with this focus is that people over 21, particularly up to the age of 25 or 26, are still susceptible to all of these effects, just at a lower level of risk.

That point aside, the area where every age runs the same risk is on the highway. Again, teens and young adults are more at risk because they tend to take more risks in the first place. They are also less experienced with driving and with the use of alcohol and drugs. But adults do make the same stupid mistake of driving under the influence.

According to the best data we have available, drinking alcohol before driving increases the risk of accident five-fold at the still-legal .08 blood level. Driving under the influence of marijuana doubles your risk. That being the case, we would expect to find considerably more people dying on the roads because of alcohol then because of marijuana. The data on traffic accident fatalities that we have from the Vermont Department of Safety tell a somewhat different story:

This data is based on blood tests that measure active THC, so we can be reasonably sure that the drivers had used marijuana recently enough to still be DUI.

Driving Under the Influence of Marijuana Imperils Safety

Note the small difference between the number of deaths due to alcohol and the number due to marijuana. The most likely reason for this is that many marijuana users think it’s OK to drive after using. For teenagers, we have clear evidence for that from our Youth Risk Behavior Survey.

Here’s the 2015 data:

Reports from both Colorado and Washington indicate that the same must be happening there. While accidents and fatalities involving drunk drivers went down in recent years, the numbers involving marijuana went up.

Why is this happening? Because we are not teaching people – young or old – that marijuana impairs your ability to drive. At a well-attended forum on marijuana effects held in Burlington last month, one attendee stood up and insisted that marijuana helps people drive more carefully, and this message pervades the popular websites that cater to people interested in learning more about marijuana from sources “untainted” by officials like police officers and scientists.

It’s important to note that the traffic fatality data shown above only includes deaths in accidents. It does not include the five Harwood teenagers killed on I-89 last October. The driver of the car that hit theirs, Steve Bourgoin (36, hardly a teen), has been charged with second-degree murder, so their deaths are not considered to be due to a traffic accident.

Addiction is Not a Crime

Addiction is not a crime, it is a mental health issue, and the behavior of users who suffer acute or chronic psychotic episodes goes far beyond the usual definition of addiction.

When Bourgoin’s blood toxicology report was completed, authorities withheld the contents pending trial; however, Vermont investigative reporter Mike Donoghue, writing for Vermont News First, quoted several sources in saying that there was active THC in Bourgoin’s blood at the time of the accident. Since then, Vermont Rep. Ben Joseph, D-Grand Isle-Chittenden, a retired judge, has reported being told the same thing by contacts of his in the state legal apparatus.

As reported on VTDigger, Bourgoin told friends that he suffered from anxiety and PTSD due to childhood trauma, and his former girlfriend told detectives that he self-treated with marijuana for “mood spells.” Court documents quote her saying, “It was always very evident when he was out [of marijuana], as he would be more angry and violent during those times.”

Anger is one of marijuana’s withdrawal symptoms, and it is a more addictive drug than most people think. A review of several studies of treatment methods for marijuana addiction found that one-year abstinence rates for adults, even under the most effective treatments, ranged only from 19 to 29 percent.

In a 20-year study involving more than 2000 U.S. war veterans being treated for PTSD, the vets who used medical marijuana along with the standard therapy reported more violent behaviors and worse outcomes after treatment than vets who didn’t use marijuana. The heaviest users showed the strongest effects. Another study found that marijuana use resulted in increased suicidal ideation among marijuana users.

Marijuana and Mental Health Problems

There are other correlations between marijuana and serious mental health problems. Since 2002, a series of studies in Europe have reported that individuals who use cannabis have a greater risk of developing psychotic symptoms. Not only does marijuana bring on symptoms earlier and make them worse, it is a causative factor.

A Finnish study published this past November compared sets of twins where one used marijuana heavily and the other did not. Heavy use increased the risk of developing psychosis by a factor of 3.5. Again, the data indicated that, in many cases, marijuana abuse caused the psychosis, not the other way around. The newly released report on marijuana from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences agrees with these findings.

Addiction is not a crime, it is a mental health issue, and the behavior of users who suffer acute or chronic psychotic episodes goes far beyond the usual definition of addiction. These sufferers needs effective treatment far more than jail time. And these new research findings, combined with Vermont’s recent traffic fatality data, highlight the fact that marijuana is not harmless. Legalizing recreational marijuana in Vermont would not be a simple matter.

Vermont has already decriminalized marijuana use. What we haven’t done is provide a mental health system that can deal with the thousands of cases of addiction, psychosis, and other mental illnesses that we already have in our state, nor have we done nearly enough to educate Vermonters about marijuana’s harms, in order to prevent tragedies from happening.

Legalizing marijuana – whether like alcohol or tobacco – will only make our mental health burden worse, while it makes our highways far less safe.

A former supporter of legalization, Whitlock is now opposed. He is a member of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM-VT)

Addiction, Gateway Drug, Testimonies

Cannabis Goes with Heroin Like Peaches and Cream

Author Explains why Heroin Users Need Their Pot

By Richard Adamski

Three Trees by Richard Adamski is available on Amazon.com

 I started smoking cannabis when I was aged 19 and smoked it for about thirty years.  For a period of about two years I took methamphetamine, originally ‘bombing’ it (putting the powdered drug tightly in a small piece of tissue or a rolling paper and swallowing it).  I progressed to injecting methamphetamine and became addicted to it for about 8 months.  At the time I was self-employed and could afford both drugs, namely meth and cannabis. It was when I got off methamphetamine that I started writing about drugs, particularly cannabis. I was still smoking cannabis then. To be honest the only reason I eventually stopped smoking cannabis and cigarettes is because I was diagnosed with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Years of smoking both drugs caused my COPD.

Over the years I got to know and mixed with a lot of drug users and I asked them all the same question: ‘What was the first drug you took?’ and every reply was cannabis and they continued to smoke it while they took harder drugs. Without question, cannabis is the introductory drug to other drugs. Most drug users start with cannabis. No one has died from smoking cannabis but indirectly they have. I personally know four people who have died because of a heroin overdose and the first drug they took, and continued to take up to their deaths, was cannabis.

Why Cannabis Fits so Well with Class A Drugs

Cannabis goes well with Class A drugs, i.e. heroin and methamphetamine. For example: If you have a toot (burn off the foil) of heroin, then inhale cannabis, keep the smoke in your body for several seconds then exhale, the cannabis increases the heroin effect. Cannabis goes well while you’re buzzing on methamphetamine. Like heroin, when you come down off the drug, a cannabis joint lessens the withdrawal effect.

The side effects of excessive use of cannabis range from anxiety and paranoia to problems with attention, memory and coordination and while you continue to smoke cannabis you are keeping the illegal drug industry going. Cannabis and Class A drugs undeniably go together like peaches and cream. The only people who need cannabis are those who smoke it.

Some people may say that I’m a hypocrite in writing what I have done as I took drugs over a long period of time.  All I can say in my defense is that with taking drugs and mixing with and meeting drug users, I have seen how cannabis runs the drug show.

What about marijuana used as medicine?

There’s massive support for cannabis to be decriminalized or legalized and a lot of famous people support this action. In the UK the BMA (British Medical Association) voted overwhelmingly for cannabis to be made available for such as cancer and MS sufferers. A while ago there was a big national debate about cannabis and in one of the national newspapers there was a half-page photograph of an elderly MS sufferer with a cannabis joint in his mouth. To me that is setting a bad and dangerous example. ‘If he can smoke it, then why can’t I?’ and ‘It’s not doing him any harm so why should it me?’

If such as the MS sufferer could be medically supplied with cannabis in such as a tincture way (dissolved in alcohol), cake, organic yoghurt, as a pill and only available on prescription then that would shut him up and others like him of a similar persuasion. In my opinion cannabis should never be made legal in herbal, grass, weed, because it is in this form where the cannabis problems lie.

Broken Dreams and Death: Marijuana at 14, then heroin

I knew a young man named Ross who dealt cannabis and injected heroin. He didn’t deal heroin. He wasn’t an addict and took heroin and cannabis as recreational drugs. He died at the age off 22 because he had a bad hit of heroin. Whether it was cut with a bad substance I don’t know, but he was found dead in his flat with the needle still in his arm. Ross once told me: ‘I actually wanted to be a pilot in the RAF (Royal Air Force), but at the age of 14 I started smoking Ganga and that put an end to that.’

In my strong opinion, cannabis is the most dangerous drug because most people think it isn’t.

Richard Adamski is the author of Three Trees. Three Trees is a contemporary Wind in the Willows where woodland creatures act as humans do in the environment they live in.  An anti-drug theme runs throughout the story.  He lives in England.

Drug Policy

Problems Testing for Marijuana DUI

How do we know a driver is marijuana-impaired?

All around the U.S. there are horror stories of passengers being seriously injured or killed by other drivers who are under the influence of marijuana.

Stoners will argue that, “I drive better when I’m high, ” but unfortunately for them science tells us that this is not the case. The National institute on Drug Abuse conducted a study with 19 participants in “the most sophisticated driving simulator of its kind to mirror real-life situations.”    Read about the study on marijuana impact on driving.

Although marijuana had a less dramatic effect than alcohol on drivers the study found it still impairs driving performance.  Researchers found the drug reduced the drivers’ peripheral vision giving them tunnel vision.  Drivers with blood concentrations of THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, showed increased weaving within the lane, similar to those with 0.08 breath alcohol, the threshold for impaired driving in many states.

Currently there is no federal regulation on the amount of  marijuana allowed to be in one’s system while driving.  Since legalization, both Colorado and Washington have agreed that the base level would be five nanograms.

No standardized marijuana tests exist

How do police officers go about testing for marijuana in a drivers system? Currently there is no standardized test for officers to use in order to determine the marijuana intoxication level of a driver.

THC rapidly leaves the bloodstream so any time delay before testing gives false readings.Marijuana can still impair judgement once it leaves the bloodstream, because the THC can remain in fatty brain tissue, for days or weeks.

States that have decriminalize laws are much tougher to prove marijuana intoxication since the person in question might legally be allowed to possess the drug.

Something needs to change

Within the past few years there have been multiple instances where “professional” drivers have been cited for being stoned on the job. Recently on March 28th, 2017 a school bus driver in Massachusetts was called out by students for smelling like marijuana.

He was arrested on scene but will most likely not face charges since there is no proven way to accurately test for the marijuana in his system.   Laws vary from state to state regarding what kind of background check different drivers have to go through.

For instance, in Pennsylvania school bus drivers are required to submit finger prints to the FBI, provide a urine sample, and complete a background check before being appointed the position.

However in Kansas, it is not required by the state to have a background check performed on a school bus driver, although the option is still available.

In 2013, the first full year after Washington state legalized pot, nearly 25 percent more drivers tested positive for marijuana than before legalization.

Also in Washington State, fatal driving accidents had risen 122% between 2010 & 2014.  Since dispensaries have opened, the number of drivers testing positive for pot jumped by one third.

The first marijuana related death in Washington occurred when a young man went to pass another car on the highway. He crossed over the center line and struck another car head on and then managed to hit another two cars.

The passenger in the car was also killed on scene but the driver he hit head on managed to survive the impact. Later on it was discovered that the deceased driver tested positive for marijuana.

On October 4, 2013 a young adult male riding his motorcycle died after being struck by a stoned driver.  The driver, Caleb Floyd, made an illegal left-hand turn into the cyclist killing him at the scene. Blake Gaston had just left dinner that night with his family and was headed home when he was struck.

At Floyd’s sentencing there was not one dry eye in the room when Mary Gaston, Blake’s mother, was speaking. She had this to say, “I heard the thud, and I knew — I knew immediately that he had been hit, the force of the impact resulted in a horrific death. I know because I was there. I watched my son die.”

Floyd received a 34 month prison sentence with an additional 365 days hanging over his head if he somehow violates his plea agreement with the court or his probation once he is released.

Unfortunately the California Highway Patrol doesn’t keep statistics on traffic accidents attributed to marijuana use. But, according to Prop 64 backer Nate Bradley; who just happens to be a former police officer, the new marijuana initiative will actually help to put protocol into place to test for impairment.

Better testing protocols need to come before legalizing marijuana

California is legalizing first and asking questions later. “The initiative would direct $15 million over five years to the Highway Patrol to determine protocols and best practices for detecting people driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs, including marijuana.”  Since Colorado and Washington haven’t found ways to cut out the stoned driving, why would California do any better?

More states across the country are seeming to adopt this relaxed marijuana policy and before you know it, a good majority of drivers on the road will have marijuana in their system.

 

Washington

Washington Cracks Down on Billboards Advertising Pot

Marijuana Dispensaries have been open for three years in Washington and it’s taken legislators this long to crack down on billboards.  Last week that passed a bill aimed at making the the signs less appealing to children.

Legislators passed SB 3151 which will try to limit how marijuana companies can advertise on billboards  The sign for Green Lady Buds in Olympia uses sex appeal to portray a certain image (pictured above).   Another sign that some people found inappropriate to young audiences had a large cat saying, “I’m so high right meow.”

Rep. Joyce McDonald Introduced Bill

State lawmakers don’t think the billboards should appeal to children in any way.  The new signs should use words, not pictures.  The bill has gone to Gov. Jay Inslee for his signature.

State Rep. Joyce McDonald of Puyallup,  introduced the bill.  She said, “The people who have called me from my district are very concerned because every time they drive past, the billboards are in their face”   Concerned about impressionable children learning to read,  McDonald wanted to ban all the marijuana advertising on the billboards.  She doesn’t understand why the state prohibits such advertisements for cigarettes, but allows them for weed. Under a 1998 settlement agreement reached with 46 states, including Washington, tobacco companies agreed to stop using billboards to advertise their products.

Bursting the Bubble of Marijuana Hype