Tag Archives: driving

Driving, Editorial, Uncategorized

Legal Marijuana Is Making Roads Deadlier

Cannabis-related traffic fatalities are a threat to public safety. Governments need to get serious.

By the Bloomberg News Editorial Board,   April 4, 2024

Marijuana legalization is killing a lot of people. Not slowly — though some studies suggest that it may be doing that, too — but quickly, in car crashes. It’s one more symptom of the disastrous rush by lawmakers to capitalize on cannabis sales without doing the work needed to keep the public safe. 

In Canada, which legalized recreational marijuana in 2018, one study found a 475% increase in emergency-room visits for cannabis-related crashes in Ontario between 2010 and 2021. Many more cases likely went undetected, owing to a dearth of reliable testing for driving while high. 

In the US, the proportion of motor-vehicle fatalities involving cannabis use soared to 21.5% in 2018, up from 9% in 2000. One analysis found a 10% increase in vehicular deaths, on average, following legalization by states. In California, the increase was 14%; in Oregon, it was 22%. 

This suggests that more than 1,000 Americans could be dying annually because of marijuana-related accidents — and that’s just in states where legalization has occurred. Given the ease of transporting the drug across state lines, the real number could be far higher. 

The cause of these deaths isn’t just the drug itself. It’s ignorance. A recent study found that about half of marijuana users thought they were OK to drive 90 minutes after inhaling or ingesting the drug, yet their driving performance in a simulated vehicle was as bad as it had been after 30 minutes. Evidence suggests people should wait a minimum of four hours before getting behind the wheel; some experts recommend eight to 12 hours. 

That people don’t know this is the fault of governments, which have rushed headlong into legalization without doing the required research or adopting necessary safeguards. In effect, they’re conducting live experiments on their own citizens. Voters should hold officials accountable for boosting public awareness and developing better detection technology.

The fight against drinking and driving offers a useful precedent. After widespread government-sponsored campaigns helped stigmatize such conduct, drunk-driving fatalities were cut in half. Stronger enforcement also played a part. The advent of Breathalyzers made drinkers think twice before getting behind the wheel. 

So far, marijuana users don’t face the same disincentive, partly because the technology for roadside testing isn’t reliable or widespread. Fear of arrest is a powerful public-policy lever, but right now, many drivers are getting high with impunity, and the public is paying a high price.

Bloomberg News published this editorial on April 4, 2024. It was reprinted in part by the Chicago Tribune on April 10, 2024. 

The photo above comes from a crash that killed three teens and injured another near Lynnwood, WA in July, 2017. Washington legalized marijuana in 2012, and commercialized it in 2014.

Driving, Drug Policy

Passing MORE Act means 6,800 more deaths a year

The MORE Act, which may be voted on by the full House this week, would legalize marijuana nationally.  But it also could lead to upwards of 6,800 more traffic deaths a year, as well as other problems.   Please write Congress to say NO to the MORE Act, and no to MORE deaths.  (The MORE Act would go far beyond  decriminalization and lead to national legalization.)

A Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study showed how statistics from the first four states to legalize pot, could be used to estimate the increase of traffic fatalities if we adopted national legalization.  These deaths are preventable. 

Recent events show how marijuana worms its way out of regulation.   Yesterday San Francisco City Council voted to ban smoking in apartment buildings, but excluded marijuana. According to AP: “The original proposal sought to ban residents from smoking marijuana in their apartments, but supervisors voted to exclude marijuana after cannabis activists said the law would take away their only legal place to smoke. It’s illegal under state law to smoke cannabis in public places.”

California residents who voted on Proposition 64 believed that children would not see billboard advertising. However, the industry pushed for it and the industry got it.  Fortunately, a judge ruled that the billboards violate the proposition.  

Colorado allows billboard advertising for marijuana, but the city of Denver does not.  State regulatory bodies give extraordinary privilege to the sellers of this dangerous drug, even though tobacco advertising on billboards is not allowed and even though selling the drug goes against federal law.   

Yesterday a marijuana delivery driver was robbed and beaten in Maine. Despite Maine’s small, carefully designed marijuana program, assaults on marijuana deliveries occurred three times. A drug that makes users violent and promises the industry huge profits cannot be “regulated.”

Medical Documentation, Mental Health

Cannabis and THC: How it damages the brain and body

By Mary Brett BSc (Hons) Chair of Cannabis Skunk Sense in Great Britain www.cannabisskunksense.co.uk

Damage is caused in several different ways.

Neuron — Courtesy of Mary Brett who provided the image

BRAIN: Messages are passed from cell to cell (neurons) in the brain by chemicals called neurotransmitters which fit by shape into their own receptor sites on specific cells.

The neurotransmitter, anandamide, an endo-cannabinoid (made in body) whose job is to control by suppression the levels of other neurotransmitters is mimicked and so replaced by a cannabinoid (not made in body) in cannabis called THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol). THC is very much stronger and damps down more forcefully the release of other neurotransmitters. Consequently the total activity of the brain decreases. Chaos ensues. Continue reading Cannabis and THC: How it damages the brain and body →

Politics

Lies and propaganda designed to get full marijuana legalization

These claims aren’t based on fact, but they’re propaganda points commonly used to get public support for legalization.

  • Marijuana needs to be rescheduled in order to explore its medical properties. (The National Academy of Medicine Report of 2017 considered at 10,000 scientific abstracts to reach 100 conclusions.  There’s no shortage of research studies on marijuana.)
  • Marijuana is safer than alcohol. (The risks of marijuana use are somewhat different from those of alcohol. Seth Leibsohn’s article, When a Lie Travels, demonstrates why it’s inappropriate to compare these two substances.  Both are dangerous, but marijuana is far more toxic to the brain than alcohol. Keeping marijuana illegal keeps usage down which is a form of “harm reduction.”)

Strangely, pot advocates often talk about the dangers of alcohol as a reason to legalize marijuana.

  • Millions of people are in jail for possessing small amounts of marijuana. (The number of people in federal and state prisons for minor marijuana infractions is less than 1%. There is truth to the claim that blacks and Hispanics are treated more harshly by the criminal justice system. True before and after legalization, this issue cannot be resolved by legalization and it isn’t limited to drug policy.)

Not good substitute for opioids

  • Legalizing marijuana frees police to concentrate on more serious crimes. (FBI data from the first four states to legalize, Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon, shows that crime increases significantly after legalization. Those four states had about 450 murders and 30,300 aggravated assaults in 2013. In 2018, they had almost 620 murders and 38,000 aggravated assaults—an increase of 37 percent for murders and 25 percent for aggravated assaults, far greater than the national increase.
  • Regulation works. (Despite the fact that states have costly regulatory bodies, much dispensary marijuana is tainted with mold, fungus and pesticides.  Some of the vaping illnesses and deaths can be traced to legal, regulated marijuana stores. In other words, it’s not only bootleg marijuana vapes that are causing deaths.)

Not a tax windfall

  • Legalized marijuana brings billions of tax dollars into the states that have legalized. (In all the states that have legalized, marijuana tax money represents less than 1% of state revenue.  We don’t have detailed analysis of the social costs: crashes, traffic deaths, butane hash oil explosions, mental health and emergency room costs related to cannabis.)  States that have legalized faced a huge increase in homelessness.
  • People do not drive better under the influence of marijuana, as pot advocates claim. (Traffic deaths rose in the first states to legalize marijuana. Although data is preliminary, insurance company statistics suggest this outcome, too.  Mixing marijuana and alcohol, and multi-drug impairment is a rising problem that coincides with marijuana legalization. Drugged driving surpassed drunk driving as a cause of traffic deaths a few years ago. Marijuana is the number one drug associated with drugged driving.)
  • Marijuana isn’t addictive. (Roughly 30% of regular marijuana users in the US are classified as having a cannabis use disorder, versus 10-20% of alcohol users.  A study from UC Davis found that adults dependent on cannabis had more financial and social problems than those dependent on alcohol. Addiction studies show that 9% of adult users and 17% of those who begin pot use as adolescents become addicted. These statistics come from the last century and don’t account for today’s high potency cannabis.)

The most devious lie

  • Marijuana never killed anyone.  The most pernicious lie is that marijuana never killed anyone, which advocates repeat because marijuana doesn’t cause overdose deaths by crossing the blood-brain barrier.  (In addition to those killed by marijuana-impaired drivers, we have a long list of those whose marijuana use caused mental illness and led to other drugs or suicide.  Young people have also died from cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, heart arrhythmia and from vaping marijuana. Not to mention when people do foolish and stupid things when under the influence, causing accidental death.)

When asked in polls, about 65% of the people claim to favor legalization, but these polls don’t ask about decriminalization.   When polls ask about decriminalization, the answers change.

The Drug Policy Alliance, an organization at the forefront of drug policy reform, pushes for the legalization of all drugs.

Read our position on legalization and rescheduling.