Marijuana and Driving Impairment
funny how it wasn't a problem worth caring about until it started getting legalized
The DUI potential of cannabis is hugely overestimated, what with all of this newly ordained testing for a substance that nobody noticed as a problem for the past half-century that tens of millions of pot-positive drivers have been on the road. (Until it became legal, and the snoops came out of the woodwork.) For a user familiar with the effects who hasn't imbibed to the ceiling, when used by itself, at worst it's about on par with Benadryl as a driving hazard. No one should drive when they're groggy, no matter what the reason; for crying out loud, exercise some good judgement. That said, adding pot to as few as one or two beers can make the combination a driving hazard, especially on an empty stomach. Granted, it's nothing compared to what happens when you add one beer to 5mg of Valium. But I don't drink and drive anyway. Not unless one drink with a full meal over the course of 90 minutes counts.
I think all DUI- including alcohol- should be assessed by using violations, cameras, and AI sensors detecting driver performance as the primary evidence, not tests for ingestion. Chemical tests of body fluids are not probative for DUI, they're Purity Tests. But if someone is shown to be plainly, measurably fucking up on the road, they're relevant evidence.
I spent so many years doing driving occupations to get to those conclusions.
The last driving job I had required random testing. That's bullshit. It's 100% about pot; practically anything else is water soluble, and can be flushed out of someone's system on 48 hours notice with some help from herbs and B vitamins. (I was tested twice. Yeah, I was "clean" both times, and fuck you, I quit. I really liked my job driving a van for the disabled, by the way. I was good at it.) The only people I saw get fired for Federal DOT violations were over weed. Cannabis they ,might have used three weeks earlier. That's on their Permanent Record; they may never get another driving job again. It's the sort of thing that drives people to the synthetic "THC analogs", which are all much, much more potent and hazardous. Not even the same class of substance. But most of them are undetectable on drug tests. The industry- testing for dope is a >$1 billion industry- can't keep up with the analogs.
A selection of links:
Addiction. 2023 Mar 12. doi: 10.1111/add.16188. Online ahead of print. The effect of recreational cannabis legalization on rates of traffic injury in Canada: Conclusions: Canada's recreational cannabis legalization did not notably impact motor vehicle and pedestrian/cyclist injury. The rate of emergency department visits for motor vehicle injury decreased immediately after COVID-19 lockdowns, resulting in rates below post-recreational cannabis legalization levels in the year after COVID-19.
Traffic Inj Prev. 2020;21(8):521-526. doi: 10.1080/15389588.2020.1810246. Epub 2020 Aug 28. An examination of relationships between cannabis legalization and fatal motor vehicle and pedestrian-involved crashes: Conclusions: Overall findings do not suggest an elevated risk of total or pedestrian-involved fatal motor vehicle crashes associated with cannabis legalization.
Addiction. 2019 Sep;114(9):1616-1626. doi: 10.1111/add.14663. Epub 2019 Jul Cannabis use as a risk factor for causing motor vehicle crashes: a prospective study: Conclusions: In this sample of non-fatally injured motor vehicle drivers in British Columbia, Canada, there was no evidence of increased crash risk in drivers with Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol < 5 ng/ml and a statistically non-significant increased risk of crash responsibility (odds ratio = 1.74) in drivers with Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol ≥ 5 ng/ml.