As more states are poised to legalize medicinal marijuana, it's looking like dope is playing a larger role as a cause of fatal traffic accidents.
Columbia University researchers performing a toxicology examination of nearly 24,000 driving fatalities concluded that marijuana contributed to 12% of traffic deaths in 2010, tripled from a decade earlier.
NHTSA studies have found drugged driving to be particularly prevalent among younger motorists. One in eight high school seniors responding to a 2010 survey admitted to driving after smoking marijuana. Nearly a quarter of drivers killed in drug-related car crashes were younger than 25. Likewise, nearly half of fatally injured drivers who tested positive for marijuana were younger than 25.
A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study found that 4% of drivers were high during the day and more than 6% at night, and that nighttime figure more than doubled on weekends.
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9 comments:
Does this not surprise anyone?
All of a sudden, overnight, more people are now being killed/injured by people smoking pot?
BS.
This is just the set-up for some new police military style "campaign" against citizens. More random Nazi "checkpoints". More and more reasons for these "you don't go anywhere that we don't give you permission to go". And you better comply. Or we might just kill you. Being "afraid", and such.
Such a made up percentage. Brb, run into a tree while texting my buddy... have marijuana in my system... Marijuana did it! Genius!
This story is about impaired driving media deflection, a ruse used to focus the media spot light on marijuana instead of the real problem, legalized alcohol use and pharmaceutical prescription drug abuse, which are the true culprits of impaired driving, not the pot used for slowing down a dummies brain. I'd rather have to meet a pot head that's high on the highway versus a drunk or pill head, they're the real killers.
I am total against the legalization of POT in any form, but this is BS. I'd be curious to see how the stats differ from the ones from 1975 or 76 when most teenagers smoked.. Even Bill, although I understand he did not inhale..
Since marijuana smoked today will still be in your system two weeks from now, any accident one may be in during the time period without being high on that day will still test positive and allow big huffy law enforcement people to make up big huffy stories like this one. They will even be able to get some people to believe the big huffy stories, if they tell them often enough!
Can I just say that I am proud of the first 6 commenters on here. Thanks for not being total sheep and thinking critically about the BS in this article.
And don't forget that being TIRED also plays a large role in how you drive especially when you combine being tired with being drunk or high. Someone who would normally blow a .07 would be a danger to people on the road if they were exhausted as opposed to being well rested. Yet they would still be under the legal limit.
There are many factors beyond intoxicants that determine how you drive.
I see no stats to indicate how many of those who had THC metabolites in their systems also had alcohol in their bloodstreams. Without that information, the research is fatally flawed and only good for inaccurately politicizing anti-marijuana sentiments.
A large number of substance abusers rely on more than one substance at a time.
The legislature and governor must have been both drunk and stoned when they passed the recent legislation encouraging marijuana usage.
Smokes are bad, but pot is cool? Go figure.
To the best of my knowledge there is not a roadside test for pot that mirrors breathalyzers for alcohol in accuracy and ease of administration.
So the net effect is encouraging more stoned driving without an objective enforcement tool, other than the nose of a cop or dog, or unused pot.
Impairment is impairment: drinks, phones, texts, pot, or any combination. Consequences will be the same for those innocently injured.
Annapolis deserves an F grade.
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