If Marijuana is Legal, Will Drivers be Stoned? OpposingViews / Norml / 08,09,2010 Our California NORML Coordinator, Dale Gieringer, has penned an informative viewpoint for the Sacramento Bee, addressing the one of the only two arguments against legalization of marijuana that still have any traction with the people: Marijuana Mayhem on the Freeways!” (the other being: “My God! What About the Children!?!”) As usual, the prohibitionists’ stark warnings about the peril of stoned drivers after legalization only makes sense if you believe nobody is smokingpot now. Studies on marijuana and driving safety are remarkably consistent, though greatly under-publicized because they fail to support the government’s anti-pot line. Eleven different studies of more than 50,000 fatal accidents have found that drivers with marijuana-only in their system are on average no more likely to cause accidents than those with low, legal levels of alcohol below the threshold for DUI. The major exception is when marijuana is combined with alcohol, which tends to be highly dangerous. Several studies have failed to detect any increased accident risk from marijuana at all. The reason for pot’s relative safety appears to be that it tends to make users drive more slowly, while alcohol makes them speed up. Thus legalization could actually reduce accidents if more drivers used marijuana instead of alcohol, but it could also increase them if there were more combined use of the two.Nobody is saying “toke up and get behind the wheel”; our Principles of Responsible Use firmly states “The responsible cannabis consumer does not operate a motor vehicle or other dangerous machinery while impaired by cannabis”. However, it would be naive to think every cannabis consumer uses responsibly. Geiringer addresses this by pointing out that California, the state with the easiest access to medical marijuana, has only the 14th-highest rating of states with marijuana-related accidents, while states like Indiana and South Carolina, some of the most hostile states with respect to marijuana, have far more marijuana-related accidents. Within California, two of the most liberal cities for pot access, San Francisco and Santa Cruz, had zero marijuana-related accidents in the past year of record. US accident rates in general have been declining steadily since the 1960s, even as marijuana use reached its greatest rates in the late 1970s. Even in the 1980s when marijuana legalization was at its lowest levels of support and throughout the 1990s and 2000s as medical marijuana spread from state to state, the highway accident rates have continued their steady decline. It seems that whether marijuana is popular and legal or not, it makes no difference in roadway safety. Besides, driving under the influence of marijuana is illegal in California now and Prop 19 does nothing to undo that. Californians can and have been arrested for drugged driving over the past fourteen years, even with legal medical marijuana. Whatever cops are doing now to arrest pot-smoking drivers for DUID will still be done after Prop 19 passes. The drunk driver speeds through the stop sign without seeing it. The stoned driver stops and patiently waits for it to turn green. Guitherism
I am sure the prohibitionists will twist it and say everyone will drive drunk AND stoned at the same time... but good info..
Nothing is stopping people from driving high now then if it were legal. In reality people do it all the time already, and it just isn't that dangerous as it may seem. It's not like legalizing marijuana legalizes stoned driving, nothing will change.
Pfft no! Retarded noobs to smoking who don't know how to think will crash and people will be dying all the time.
I'm a lot safer, I know that. Also when ever I'm high I can keep the speed limit exact without even the slightest difficulty. I become really good at doing tasks that require me to be slightly tactful.
Drivers are already stoned, I will drive the same amount of distance high when its legal just as I am doing now. Argument against this - Where do kids smoke, some get into their car and drive around looking for a spot. If it was legal maybe the majority of these people wouldn't have to do this and they might have a guardian present at home making it even safer.
What a great point JustALittleHigh. I can't count how many times I've gone driving for a spot because we couldn't smoke at the house due to nosy neighbors. I spend a good 12 hours per day high, at least, and I have done it like that for a good 10 years now. I think about all the road rage I see and I'm just glad to have pot so I can keep my cool on the road and let the people with ruptured hemorrhoids scream on by.
I drive stoned now. Never had a problem and I don't foresee it ever being a problem. I know when I'm able to handle my car and I know when I'm not able to handle my car. In general, I'd be a lot more hesitant to drive tired than stoned.
Of course it isn't making it legal for minors. Minors will use cannabis whether it's legal or illegal. However if it does become legal it will mean that more minors will be, more often than before, introduced to Cannabis by their parents so their parents can then teach them how to use it in a responsible and safe way. Just like is done with Alcohol now. I remember my parents talking to me about Alcohol and introducing me to it, they knew that if they introduced it to me before my friends did I would be more likely to use it responsibly as they knew I would come into contact with it sooner rather than later. On topic, there are people who drive stoned now and there will be after legalisation. There may be less after legalisation because as was mentioned beforehand you won't need to hide your usage from nosy people and have to resort to using it in the car. There are people out there who believe that you can stop people from doing 'bad' things and have them never happen again, like intoxicated driving or usage of drugs. A world like that does not exist and to be frank it would be pretty dull. In this world all you can do is reduce this stuff, and contrary to what the logic of the majority would lead us to believe (and infact my logic before I joined this community) the best way you can do this is by legalising it.