Marijuana & Driving Mega Thread

[Uzi578]

Liberals Introduce Stoned Driving Law

By: Reverend Damuzi
April 27, 2004

Science shows pot makes safer drivers

On April 24, 2004, the Liberal government introduced invasive new "drugged driving" laws that would allow cops to further persecute the marijuana community, despite science that shows pot can make drivers safer.

The bill was introduced by the Paul Martin-appointed justice minister, Irwin Cotler, who claimed the bill is necessary given that Canada will likely decriminalize pot, and follows an American model. Early last year, the Canadian government considered other, more constitutionaly-sound, made-in-Canada approaches. For example, an October 2003 report by a Canadian government committee suggested establishing legal limits on how much marijuana a person could have in their system before being "over the limit." The report also bemoaned the lack research into what a legal limit might be, and how it could be tested. Then it took a look at the American model, one that has Canadian lawyers braced for a round of constitutional challenges.

The reason the American model is so controversial is that it relies on the questionable judgment - or should we say "prejudices" - of a police officer instead of a scientific test. Under the proposed law, cops who were supposedly trained to recognize drug impairment through training in a US program would have the power to force drivers to take a roadside test. The problem is that police who don't like your bumper stickers, the way you are dressed, your hair style, or the colour of your skin, could submit you to a drug test. Furthermore, the test wouldn't say whether you were impaired, it would only tell whether you had pot in your system and pot stays in your system for days after you smoke it. So even unimpaired drivers might be charged and convicted for drugged driving, on the flimsiest of pretenses. Canadians might also be encouraged to use cocaine or other drugs which are harder, but which don't last in the system as long.

A campaign to prepare Canadians for this legislation has been assaulting the national psyche for months. Ads at the beginning of rented videos claim deaths from driving on marijuana, and some news agencies have jumped on the bandwagon. Meanwhile, numerous scientific studies have shown that regular recreational doses of marijuana actually improve driving performance. The reason for the confusion is a commonly exploited logical fallacy that the government is using to demonize the weed.

"Simply having marijuana in your system when you get into an accident is not enough to determine whether being high caused the accident," explained a sympathetic statistician, who nonetheless wished to remain anonymous. "It's a correlation, but it doesn't prove cause-and-effect. For example, if they pulled you from the wreck of a car and pumped your stomach and found jelly-doughnuts, it would hardly prove that jelly doughnuts caused your accident. If it did, we'd have to arrest all the cops for impaired driving. In fact, the science shows a high probability that stoned Canadians get into less accidents than straight ones."

Cops in BC have already been trained in the US drug-impairment recognition courses, but are so far unable to do more than coerce, manipulate and trick drivers into taking a drug test.

Should an election be called in the spring, both the decriminalization and drugged driving bills would fail, as they wouldn't have time to pass through parliament. During the upcoming election, cannabis canadians in Justice Minister Cotler's riding would do well to take him to task for such a blatant attempt to persecute millions of his fellow Canadians with an unjust law. Politicians should either develop scientific methods of testing drug impairment levels or leave potheads alone.

~~Link to article

[Uzi578]

Marijuana Myths

By: Paul Hager
Chair, ICLU Drug Task Force

6. Legal marijuana would cause carnage on the highways

Although marijuana, when used to intoxication, does impair performance in a manner similar to alcohol, actual studies of the effect of marijuana on the automobile accident rate suggest that it poses LESS of a hazard than alcohol. When a random sample of fatal accident victims was studied, it was initially found that marijuana was associated with RELATIVELY as many accidents as alcohol. In other words, the number of accident victims intoxicated on marijuana relative to the number of marijuana users in society gave a ratio similar to that for accident victims intoxicated on alcohol relative to the total number of alcohol users. However, a closer examination of the victims revealed that around 85% of the people intoxicated on marijuana WERE ALSO INTOXICATED ON ALCOHOL. For people only intoxicated on marijuana, the rate was much lower than for alcohol alone. This finding has been supported by other research using completely different methods. For example, an economic analysis of the effects of decriminalization on marijuana usage found that states that had reduced penalties for marijuana possession experienced a rise in marijuana use and a decline in alcohol use with the result that fatal highway accidents decreased. This would suggest that, far from causing "carnage", legal marijuana might actually save lives.

~~Link to article

[Uzi578]

Licensed to Heal
Licensed to Wheel

Grant Kreiger Gets a Ticket to Ride

In January, 42-year-old Grant Krieger received his driver's license from the Saskatchewan Government, even though he admitted on his application that he consumes marijuana on a regular basis to relieve the muscle spasms and pain associated with multiple sclerosis.
   
Grant Krieger drew national headlines last May, when he tried to openly bring prescribed marijuana from Holland into Canada (see CC#6). He was detained by Dutch Authorities and his healing herbs were confiscated.
   
Kreiger submitted his Dutch prescription to Saskatchewan Government Insurance (SGI), which is the agency that approves the province's driver's licenses, and he testified that he no longer gets impaired when using marijuana, which he both smokes and ingests on a regular basis.
   
Darcy McKenzie of SGI was quoted as saying that the board followed "the guidelines set by the Canadian Medical Association and the American Medical Association, in concert with our legislation in Saskatchewan." He continued "There's not a lot of extensive research in this issue, and let's be fair, doctors have prescribed the use of cannabis in Canada for glaucoma."
   
Who knows, maybe SGI even read the 1994 study by Holland's Institute for Human Psychopharmacology, which, after comprehensive on-road driving tests, concluded that "THC's adverse effects on driving performance appeared relatively small," and that "users seem able to compensate for its adverse effects."
   
This confirmed a massive 1992 study by the US National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, which concluded that marijuana is rarely involved in driving accidents except when combined with alcohol, and that "there was no indication that marijuana by itself was a cause of fatal accidents."
Bianca Sind

For more info... contact Grant Krieger at Highwear Hemp: 4445 Castle Road Regina, Saskatchewan, S4S 4W4. Phone (306) 586-4367; fax (306) 584-5141; email highwear.hemp@sk.sympatico.ca; http://www.dlcwest.com/~barbaron/hemp.html

~~Link to article

[Uzi578]

Setting Drug Impairment Levels Far Off

By: Lisa Sink of the Journal Sentinel Staff
Source: Journal Sentinel
March 26, 2002

State toxicologists said Tuesday that it would be virtually impossible for Wisconsin to set specific drug impairment levels for drivers because that science is in its infancy.

In fact, they said, it may never be possible to prove that every driver who ingests the same level of the same drug is impaired because, unlike alcohol, other drugs do not affect people the same way. Only one state - Nevada - has set specific limits on the amount of drugs drivers may have in their system before they are prosecuted.

But Nevada's levels are not based on proven impairment, said Wisconsin toxicologist Patrick Harding, who called Nevada's law "the poster child for bad drug laws."

Eight other states instead have adopted "zero tolerance" laws making it a crime for drivers to have any amount of illegal drugs in their system, whether the drugs cause impairment or not, according to the National Traffic Law Center, a division of the American Prosecutors Research Institute in Alexandria, Va.

Four of those eight "zero tolerance" states are Wisconsin neighbors - Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana and Iowa.

But in Wisconsin, where tavern industry interests have political clout, lawmakers prefer to prosecute bad driving, not alcohol and drug presence, Harding said.

Nonetheless, some prosecutors struggle to prove drug-impaired driving because of the lack of a legal standard such as Wisconsin's 0.10 blood-alcohol limit in drunken driving cases.

In one Milwaukee County fatal car crash involving a driver who reports showed had Ecstasy and marijuana in his system but no alcohol, a prosecutor opted against charging the driver with homicide by intoxicated driving because of the difficulty in proving beyond a reasonable doubt that his driving was impaired.

Instead she charged the driver with homicide by negligent driving. The difference in the maximum penalty upon conviction is 40 years in prison vs. only two years in prison for homicide by negligent driving.

In Waukesha County, District Attorney Paul Bucher is researching whether he can prove that the driver of a Mack truck that police say caused a fatal crash was impaired by the amount of marijuana tests showed he had in his system.

DA not convinced

Bucher scoffed at toxicologists' comments that setting drug impairment levels would be difficult if not impossible.

"That's ridiculous," Bucher said. "I totally disagree that they could not come up with a level of, say, Delta 9 THC (a metabolite of marijuana used in blood tests).

"Why can't they simply say at five nanograms per milliliter" a driver is impaired, Bucher asked.

Harding and several other toxicologists said that if a drug limit were set at an extremely high level it would be more likely that all drivers with that level would be impaired.

Were lower levels to become the standard, experts said, some drivers tested may be found able to drive well, while others may not, depending on their individual tolerance to that drug.

"There is such a huge variation in response to drugs at the same concentration in people," Harding said.

Laura Liddecoat, Harding's supervisor at the Wisconsin Laboratory of Hygiene, said that years of study of alcohol abuse and driving have proved that all drivers tested became increasingly impaired the more alcohol they drank. But replicating those studies for other drugs, she said, is difficult because researchers ethically can't dose subjects with illicit drugs to gauge their driving abilities.

Also, many drivers take multiple drugs making it more difficult for researchers to say which drug caused what problem. Some drugs on their own may not cause impairment but can be dangerous in combination with alcohol or other drugs, Liddecoat said.

Tests show that drivers also are getting behind the wheel after taking excessive levels of prescription drugs, painkillers and over-the-counter drugs, even cold medication, she said.

"The drugs are three to five times the therapeutic levels," she said.

Motorists even have driven after taking Ambien, a prescription drug used to combat insomnia, Liddecoat said. "It's supposed to put them to sleep at 300 nanograms per liter and people are driving at 1,200 nanograms."

Marcia Cunningham, director of the National Traffic Law Center, said Tuesday that prosecutors nationwide are clamoring for guidelines indicating how much of various drugs make driving unsafe.

While "zero tolerance laws" may not be the most preferable approach, she said, "I cannot see how (they) can be anything but helpful."

Defense lawyer James A.H. Bell, of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said defense lawyers prefer a requirement that prosecutors must prove impairment.

Chemists and toxicologists around the country are trying to meet prosecutors' demand for standards.

A Washington state toxicologist is studying levels of drugs found in drivers who caused fatal crashes and is comparing that data with the officers' observations of the drivers behavior, Liddecoat said.

Note: Effect fluctuates, state toxicologists say.

Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on March 27, 2002.

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI)
Author: Lisa Sink of the Journal Sentinel Staff
Published: March 26, 2002
Copyright: 2002 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Contact: jsedit@onwis.com
Website: http://www.jsonline.com/

~~Link to article

[Uzi578]

Court Says Idaho Motorists Can Drive While High

By: Jessica Brice, Associated Press Writer 
Source: Associated Press
March 21, 2002

Idaho motorists can still drive high, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday, but not for long.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stood by its earlier ruling that it is legal to drive high in Idaho, as long as you can drive straight. In doing so, it shot down a request to rehear the case against an Idaho man arrested in 1998 for driving under the influence of marijuana.

Federal prosecutors asked the appeals court to review its decision after a three-judge panel overturned Matthew Patzer's impaired driving conviction in January because of a loophole in Idaho law.

Patzer was pulled over on Sept. 27, 1998, for a broken tailgate light. At the time, 21-year-old Patzer told a New Plymouth police officer that he had smoked marijuana at a party, but the court found that he had not been driving erratically and had passed two field sobriety tests. When police searched his Chevrolet Blazer, they found a small arsenal of illegal weapons.

Current Idaho laws make it illegal to drive under the influence of alcohol and narcotics. But marijuana is not listed in the books as a narcotic, so police cannot assume that a person is impaired just because he smoked pot, the court ruled.

"The entirety of the government's probable cause argument in response to Patzer's appeal was that marijuana is a narcotic," the appeals court wrote. "We resolved this argument adversely to the government, finding that Idaho law consistently defines marijuana as outside the category of narcotic drugs."

The Idaho Legislature sent Gov. Dirk Kempthorne a bill last week closing the legal loophole. The bill states that driving a vehicle under the influence of drugs or intoxicating substances -- including marijuana -- is a crime. Kempthorne's staff said the governor will sign the bill.

The court's decision also throws out the government's request to reconsider its reversal of Patzer's illegal weapons convictions. The court ruled in January that because of Patzer's unlawful arrest, it was illegal to search his vehicle.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alan Burrow, in Boise, Idaho, said the government is considering bringing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case is United States v. Matthew Patzer, 00-30360

Source: Associated Press
Author: Jessica Brice, Associated Press Writer
Published: March 21, 2002
Copyright: 2002 Associated Press

~~Link to article

[Uzi578]

"Drugged Driving" Campaigners Open New Front with Federal Legislation

March 19, 2004

A little more than a year ago, DRCNet reported on the opening of a campaign led by drug czar John Walters and backed by self-interested drug testing consultants to crack down on "drugged driving," or operating a motor vehicle while high (http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/264/druggeddriving.shtml). Walters, backed up by research and recommendations from the drug test consulting firm the WalshGroup (http://www.walshgroup.org), called on states to enact zero tolerance per se laws against drugged driving.

Per se laws assume that a certain level of a drug in one's system is prima facie evidence that one is intoxicated. State drunk driving laws, where a blood alcohol level of 0.08% gets one an automatic drunk driving conviction, are examples of such laws. The difference between per se drunk driving laws and the per se drugged driving laws envisioned by Walters (and already enacted by eight states, according to the American Prosecutors Research Institute), is that the drugged driving laws will set the amount of drugs in one's system that would trigger a drugged driving conviction at zero. Under such laws, a person who smokes a joint Friday night could be pulled over and arrested for driving while intoxicated Monday morning, long after the high has worn off, but while the notoriously long-lasting cannabis metabolites linger.

Now, Congress has joined the campaign with two bills introduced in the last two weeks, one that creates a model zero tolerance per se drugged driving law for the states, and one that would penalize the states for failing to implement such laws. On March 4, Rep. Jon Porter (R-NV) introduced H.R. 3907, which would take federal highway transportation dollars away from "states that do not enact laws to prohibit driving under the influence of an illegal drug." The bill would strip 1% of federal highway funds from states that do not enact such laws by 2006, with the percentage doubling each year up to a ceiling of 50%. And states must create mandatory minimum penalties for drugged driving to comply with the bill.

Five days later, Rep. Rob Portman (R-OH) introduced H.R. 3922, which calls for model legislation for the states to be crafted within one year from its passage. According to H.R. 3922, the model drugged driving law must include a provision defining the crime of drugged driving as occurring when a person drives "while any detectable amount of a controlled substance is present in the person's body, as measured in the person's blood, urine, saliva, or other bodily substance." In other words, a zero tolerance per se drugged driving law.

While the zero tolerance per se provision is the only mandatory provision in the law (except a rather obvious one saying that an obviously impaired person who drives commits the crime), Portman's bill generously allows the states to add more repressive measures at their discretion. Those include penalties for failing to submit to a drug test that are equal to those for a positive drug test, felony status for a third offense within 10 years, revoking the drivers' license of anyone convicted of drugged driving, and, oddly, a provision that would allow "lawful use" of a controlled substance as an affirmative offense to a drugged driving charge.

But the bill has opposition, and not just from the usual suspects. The American Prosecutors Research Institute told the Associated Press state laws already barred driving while high. "In every state of the country it's illegal for someone to drive under the influence of any drug or substance that may cause them to be impaired," said John Bobo, director of the group's National Traffic Law Center.

The states aren't too keen on either bill, said Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway traffic safety agencies. He told the AP the move in Congress to force states to adopt the 0.08 blood alcohol limit or lose funding left a bitter taste. The association is advising its members not to adopt any new drugged driving laws at this time, he said. "There has been little to no evaluation as to their effectiveness," said Adkins. "Most drivers who are drug impaired are also alcohol-impaired."

"Of course no one is defending driving while impaired," said Paul Armentano of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (http://www.norml.org), "but that's not what this federal push is about. Under these statutes, they don't have to prove actual impairment; instead, detecting even trace levels of illicit drugs or their metabolites is enough to garner a DUID [Driving Under the Influence of Drugs] conviction."

The campaign is about more than highway safety, said Armentano. "This is really the culmination of an all-out federal effort to not just crack down on impaired drivers, but to cast the net wide enough to target recreational drug users, particularly marijuana users."

Marijuana users are particularly vulnerable. While someone could tweak on meth all weekend long, by Wednesday he would be clean. Not so for the pot people. "Marijuana metabolites may be detectable for up to two weeks in a casual user," said University of Southern California psychologist Dr. Mitch Earleywine, author of "Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence, "but the high usually lasts no more than two to five hours."

Rather than test for drug traces, said Earleywine, test for actual impairment. "I would like to see us go in the direction of field sobriety tests," he said. "I think whether someone can't recite the alphabet or walk a straight line is a better indicator of impairment than the state of their urine. While I think the current laws are perfectly adequate, a move to field sobriety tests might get impaired drivers who are using Benadryl or other drugs we don't even look for. The point is we need a good balance between public safety and civil rights."

"These zero tolerance per se drugged driving laws do not appear to have a rational scientific basis," said Armentano. "If our concern is identifying impaired drivers and getting them off the road, we need to concentrate on impaired drivers, not inert metabolites. We already have per se drunk driving laws, but that level is not set at zero. We do not say it is illegal to drink and drive; we say it is illegal to drive impaired, and there is a measurable scientific standard. If we want per se drugged driving laws, we need to be consistent and set similar, science-based levels," he said.

But the states already have laws that address impaired driving, Armentano reiterated. "The federal government is acting as if police are pulling over wasted drivers and have to let them go because they can't drug test them, but that is not the case," he said. "The problem is, the states that have impaired driving laws make prosecutors work harder. They actually have to prove the person was unfit to drive, show recent drug use, and make a case that the impairment is related to the drug use. Those are more sensible laws."

The fight has been joined. Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin have already enacted such laws. But they have also been defeated at least twice, in Utah in February 2003, and last week in Hawaii.

"We have a massive education campaign to undertake," said Armentano. "Concerns about highway safety and impaired driving are legitimate concerns and legislators are understandably interested in this issue. But these DUID laws are not the way," he said. "I think one key argument is to make the analogy to drunk driving laws. They punish the driver for impairment, and have scientifically sound cut-off levels. DUID laws should do no less."

To read the two bills online, visit http://thomas.loc.gov and type in the respective bill numbers, H.R. 3907 and H.R. 3922.

~~Link to article

[Uzi578]

Psychoactive Substance Use and the Risk of Motor Vehicle Accidents

July, 2004

SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research, Leidschendam, The Netherlands.

The driving performance is easily impaired as a consequence of the use of alcohol and/or licit and illicit drugs. However, the role of drugs other than alcohol in motor vehicle accidents has not been well established. The objective of this study was to estimate the association between psychoactive drug use and motor vehicle accidents requiring hospitalisation. A prospective observational case-control study was conducted in the Tilburg region of The Netherlands from May 2000 to August 2001. Cases were car or van drivers involved in road crashes needing hospitalisation. Demographic and trauma related data was collected from hospital and ambulance records. Urine and/or blood samples were collected on admission. Controls were drivers recruited at random while driving on public roads. Sampling was conducted by researchers, in close collaboration with the Tilburg police, covering different days of the week and times of the day. Respondents were interviewed and asked for a urine sample. If no urine sample could be collected, a blood sample was requested. All blood and urine samples were tested for alcohol and a number of licit and illicit drugs. The main outcome measures were odds ratios (OR) for injury crash associated with single or multiple use of several drugs by drivers. The risk for road trauma was increased for single use of benzodiazepines (adjusted OR 5.1 (95% Cl: 1.8-14.0)) and alcohol (blood alcohol concentrations of 0.50-0.79 g/l, adjusted OR 5.5 (95% Cl: 1.3-23.2) and >or=0.8 g/l, adjusted OR 15.5 (95% Cl: 7.1-33.9)). High relative risks were estimated for drivers using combinations of drugs (adjusted OR 6.1 (95% Cl: 2.6-14.1)) and those using a combination of drugs and alcohol (OR 112.2 (95% Cl: 14.1-892)). Increased risks, although not statistically significantly, were assessed for drivers using amphetamines, cocaine, or opiates. No increased risk for road trauma was found for drivers exposed to cannabis. The study concludes that drug use, especially alcohol, benzodiazepines and multiple drug use and drug-alcohol combinations, among vehicle drivers increases the risk for a road trauma accident requiring hospitalisation.

PMID: 15094417 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

~~Link to article

[Uzi578]

Marijuana and Actual Driving Performance

Posted by Dankhank
September 29, 2005

DOT HS 808 078 "Marijuana and Actual Driving Performance" Final Report, Nov. 1993 Conclusions on page 108 of the copy I received from the NHTSA are interesting and informative. A sample : "It is possible to safely study the effects of marijuana on driving on highways or city streets in the presence of other traffic." "Drivers under the influence of marijuana tend to over-estimate the adverse effects of the drug on their driving ability and compensate when they can; e.g. by increasing effort to accomplish the task, increasing headway or slowing down, or a combination of these."

DOT HS 808 939 "Marijuana, Alcohol and Actual Driving Performance" July 1999 Conclusion on page 39 midway of paragraph 5.1 of the copy I received: The addition of the new data, (for marijuana), broadens the range of reactions that may be expected to occur in real life. This range has not been shown to extend into the area that can rightfully be regarded as dangerous or an obviously unacceptable threat to public safety. DOT HS 809 020 "Visual Search and Urban City Driving under the Influence of Marijuana and Alcohol" March 2000: Conclusion 1 on page 24 of the copy I received. "Low doses of marijuana taken alone, did not impair city driving performance and did not diminish visual search frequency for traffic at intersections in this study."

General Discussion on page 22 . Previous on-the-road studies have also demonstrated that subjects are generally aware of the impairing properties of THC and try to compensate for the drug's impairing properties by driving more carefully (Hansteen et al, 1976; Casswell, 1979; Peck et al, 1986; Robbe 1994).

DOT HS 809 642 "State of Knowledge of Drug Impaired Driving" Sept 2003: Experimental Research of Cannabis, page 41 midway: "The extensive studies by Robbe and O'Hanlon (1993), revealed that under the influence of Marijuana, drivers are aware of their impairment, and when experimental tasks allow it, they tend to actually decrease speed, avoid passing other cars, and reduce other risk-taking behaviors."

DOT HS 808 065 "The Incidence and Role of Drugs in Fatally Injured Drivers" Oct. 1992 In discussing the "Distribution of Ratings on Driver Responsibility" Table 5.12 page 64 of the copy I received, paragraph (p.65); "Responsibility, drugs and alcohol, third paragraph, "the following appears: "Note that the responsibility rates of the THC-only and Cocaine-only groups are actually lower than that of the drugfree drivers. Although these results too are inconclusive, they give no suggestion of impairment in the two groups. The low responsibility rate for THC was reminiscent of that found in young males by Williams and colleagues (1986).” This study is remarkable in it's propensity to attack itself as inconclusive.

Forensic Science Review Vol. 14, Number One/Two, Jan 2002, surely must be the reference of note regarding metabolic functions and where the THC goes following ingestion. This review discuses THC and it's metabolites; THCCOOH, 11-OH-THC to mention the most discussed. Location and type of measured quantities of these and other metabolites should be easy to use to determine if a driver is "stoned" or was stoned yesterday, or last week. Mention was made of a man who had measurable levels of metabolites sixty-seven days after ingesting Cannabis.

Chap IX paragraph D, "Summary" appears to be of two minds. While stating: "Studies examining Cannabis' causal effect through responsibility analysis have more frequently indicated that THC alone did not increase accident risk …" it continues optimistically suggesting that further exhaustive research may rebut that. All of the studies agree that combining Cannabis with any other drug, such as Alcohol ... a major deleterious effect on driving skills, as is benzoates with Cannabis … it rapidly becomes evident that Cannabis in combination with any number of other drugs is not to be desired, but that Cannabis and Cocaine alone in all six studies have the smallest perceived safety risk of all the drugs and drug combinations tested and against drug-free drivers.

~~Link to article

[Uzi578]

Cannabis & Driving

By: Erowid

While it is widely accepted that cannabis use can slow motor skills and reduce task-attention, increasing in severity with dose, research has shown that cannabis use is less likely to dangerously impair driving abilities than alcohol at similar levels of intoxication. Cannabis intoxication often makes smokers more aware of their impairment, causing them to slow down and become more cautious while also worsening reaction time and attention. Cannabis users often report that driving speeds are experientially 'faster' than normal: driving a given speed feels faster and more dangerous than the same speed does while sober.

There have been a number of studies which have looked at this issue and most have found that cannabis smoking does degrade driving performance. There is a little contradictory evidence about whether cannabis in combination with alcohol causes worse impairment than alcohol alone, but so far the data heavily favors the view that the combination substantially increases risks over either alone. The research so far does not provide a clear answer to how much risk of accidents increase with moderate levels of cannabis intoxication, but only confirms that the risks of cannabis-alone impairment are lower than those of alcohol-alone impairment. The following are a collection of summaries & papers which look at the issue of cannabis & driving performance.

~~Link to article

[illegal smiles]

K+++ excellent thread!

[digs_shayla]

This is all pretty damn good information Uzi. Keep us informed. Kudos.

-Digs

[los5986]

Good info, I smoke and drive all the time, and it actually helps me to not speed, i also be more focused on the road and my surroundings.

[Uzi578]

Driving sober, I never do the speed limit.  Im always driving fast.  But when Im high, I dont care and am usually doing the speed limit.  Perception is always off and it looks like Im doing 60 when Im 45...

[stunnajh]

Ya, I am a much safer driver when high!