How stoned is too stoned to drive?

boing
42

Um, he said in CA, you said in US.

Are you actually talking about the same thing, or changing the dataset?

It seems relevant -if- the goalposts got moved.

43

Yep, I’m a fan of The Checkout, and thanks to it, know that Australian consumer laws would probably frown on this.

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@Elusis

This argument drives me nuts. Sure, some people might start spewing idiocy they think is wisdom when stoned but not everyone does. I program MUCH better stoned - it gives me the patience to work on something so abstract that you effectively get no satisfaction until everything works. When sober I just say ‘fuck it’ and move on. If it really made people as ineffectual as is claimed, no website I ever made would work.

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45

Sorry… I should’ve specified that I meant California.

@catgrin The Checkout and the other stuff done by some of those guys | The Hamster Decides (2013 federal election) and The Chaser’s War on Everything (making fun of war on terror and pollies) is pretty damn funny.

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46

If society was actually serious about reducing road trauma, there are several far more effective ways to go about it than testing drivers for intoxicants.

  1. Make it easier to not drive in the first place. See the motoring lobby’s effect on public amenity over the last century.

  2. Stop handing out driver’s licenses on the back of cereal packets. Every time I’m in the car, I see folks on the road who have no business there, at least until they get a fucking clue. A good place to start would be heavily scrutinising those who buy Camrys (new, not second-hand); most of whom seem to be the Volvo drivers of yesteryear. No interest in cars or driving, they seem to consider cars as whitegoods, and apparently figure that if they’re not breaking the speed limit then they’re doing everything right.

  3. Driver education that goes further than a hysterical one-eyed emphasis on speeding and drink-driving. An appreciation for other road users and the dynamics of traffic flow would go a hell of a long way…use your damn indicators and keep left (or right, depending) unless overtaking, dammit.

  4. More resources (even some?) deployed to assist recent immigrants with getting up to speed with the dominant driving culture, instead of letting them drag it down.

  5. Some sense employed in intersection design - less traffic lights, more roundabouts, less extraneous signage, more lines on the road, etc.

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47

I’m not sure you understand the mechanics of THC.

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48

Why does most everyone jump to the automatic, knee-jerk, and FALSE assumption that cannabis impairs drivers much the same as does alcohol? Why let uninformed opinions be the basis of new laws? It took me very little time to do a search, and find actual scientific studies which indicate just how incorrect such an assumption is. Examples follow.

Studies Show Marijuana Consumption Not Associated With Dangerous Driving, May Lead to Safer Drivers
Anyone who consumes cannabis on a regular basis knows that it doesn’t make you a dangerous driver. Many people find that it makes them a safer, more focused driver; one that’s more aware of their surroundings and the dangers associated with controlling tons of gasoline-filled metal. Not only has this been an anecdotal truth for as long as cars and cannabis have been paired, science has also been clear that consuming marijuana doesn’t make you a dangerous driver, and may make some people safer drivers. More research is needed, but it’s hard to deny that of the research we have, marijuana hasn’t been found to increase a person’s risk of an accident. To back this claim up, here’s a list of studies and research conducted on this very topic, some of which were funded by national governments in hopes of different results.

Marijuana and Driving: A Review of the Scientific Evidence
“Marijuana has a measurable yet relatively mild effect on psychomotor skills, yet it does not appear to play a significant role in vehicle crashes, particularly when compared to alcohol. Below is a summary of some of the existing data.”

The incidence and role of drugs in fatally injured drivers
“There was no indication that cannabis by itself was a cause of fatal crashes.”
REFERENCE: Washington, DC: US Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
Report No. DOT HS 808 065, K. Terhune. 1992.

Marijuana’s effects on actual driving performance
“Evidence from the present and previous studies strongly suggests that alcohol encourages risky driving whereas THC encourages greater caution. … Drivers under the influence of marijuana retain insight in their performance and will compensate when they can, for example, by slowing down or increasing effort. As a consequence, THC’s adverse effects on driving performance appear relatively small.”
REFERENCE: University of Adelaide study, 1995

Role of cannabis in motor vehicle crashes
"There is no evidence that consumption of cannabis alone increases the risk of culpability for traffic crash fatalities or injuries for which hospitalization occurs, and may reduce those risks… The more cautious behavior of subjects who have received marijuana decreases the impact of the drug on performance, whereas the opposite holds true for alcohol.”
REFERENCE: Marijuana: On-Road and Driving-Simulator Studies; Epidemiologic Reviews 21: 222-232, A. Smiley. 1999.

“Both simulation and road trials generally find that driving behaviour shortly after consumption of larger doses of cannabis results in (i) a more cautious driving style; (ii) increased variability in lane position (and headway); and (iii) longer decision times. Whereas these results indicate a ‘change’ from normal conditions, they do not necessarily reflect ‘impairment’ in terms of performance effectiveness since few studies report increased accident risk.”  
REFERENCE: UK Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (Road Safety Division). 2000.

Cannabis And Cannabinoids - Pharmacology, Toxicology And Therapy
“At the present time, the evidence to suggest an involvement of cannabis in road crashes is scientifically unproven”.
REFERENCE: G. Chesher and M. Longo. 2002.

Cannabis: Our position for a Canadian Public Policy
“Cannabis alone, particularly in low doses, has little effect on the skills involved in automobile driving. Cannabis leads to a more cautious style of driving. However it has a negative impact on decision time and trajectory. This in itself does not mean that drivers under the influence of cannabis represent a traffic safety risk”
REFERENCE: Canadian Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs. 2002.

“The evidence to suggest an involvement of cannabis in road crashes is scientifically unproven.”
REFERENCE:  Cannabis and Cannabinoids: Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Therapeutic Potential, 2002
Cannabis and Cannabinoids: Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Therapeutic Potential, edited by Franjo Grotenhermen, MD and Ethan Russo, MD (Haworth Press 2002).

The Prevalence of Drug Use in Drivers, and Characteristics of the Drug-Positive Group
“There was a clear relationship between alcohol and culpability. In contrast, there was no significant increase in culpability for cannabinoids alone.”
REFERENCE: Accident Analysis and Prevention 32(5): 613-622. Longo, MC; Hunter, CE; Lokan, RJ; White, JM; and White, MA. (2000a).

The Effect Of Cannabis Compared With Alcohol On Driving
“Although cognitive studies suggest that cannabis use may lead to unsafe driving, experimental studies have suggested that it can have the opposite effect.” U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2009

Why Medical Marijuana Laws Reduce Traffic Deaths
“No differences were found during the baseline driving segment (and the) collision avoidance scenarios,”
REFERENCE: Research published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2010

Top 10 Reasons Marijuana Users Are Safer Drivers
“20 years of study has concluded that marijuana smokers may actually have fewer accidents than other drivers.”
http://www.4autoinsurancequote.com/uncategorized/reasons-why-marijuana-users-are-safe-drivers/

Risk of severe driver injury by driving with psychoactive substances
“The study found that those with a blood alcohol level of 0.12% were over 30 times more likely to get into a serious accident than someone who’s consumed any amount of cannabis. … The least risky drug seemed to be cannabis and benzodiazepines and Z-drugs.”
REFERENCE: Accident Analysis & Prevention; Volume 59, October 2013, Pages 346–356

Cannabis: Summary Report
“Cannabis alone, particularly in low doses, has little effect on the skills involved in automobile driving.”
REFERENCE: Canadian Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs

Acute cannabis consumption and motor vehicle collision risk
“There is no evidence that consumption of cannabis alone increases the risk of culpability for traffic crash fatalities or injuries for which hospitalization occurs, and may reduce those risks.”
REFERENCE: British Medical Journal, 1999; M. Bates and T. Blakely

Marijuana-DUI Case Tossed by Arizona Supreme Court in Metabolite Ruling
“Because the legislature intended to prevent impaired driving, we hold that the ‘metabolite’ reference in [the law] is limited to any of a proscribed substance’s metabolites that are capable of causing impairment . . . Drivers cannot be convicted of the . . . offense based merely on the presence of a non-impairing metabolite that may reflect the prior usage of marijuana.”

“Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!”

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49

Nope, this article was about Colorado, so I am generalizing because the companies were in Colorado, but the same is true of anything bought in California. It’s because cannabis is a controlled substance that they aren’t always properly labelled. Basic requirements may exist in a state, but they’re rarely enforced - that’s because it’s up the dispensaries, the sellers, to get the testing done.

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It’s OK Teapot - you wrote California. This true nationally, wherever marijuana products may be sold.

51

Correct. And some do. So to say that ANY product you get IS unreliable IS an overstatement.

It is possible, and it is part of the future.

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52

When you try to say something and you burst out laughing instead, you’ve had juuuuuuuust the right amount.

When your eyes decouple and you see double, then you’ve had too much.

When you try to stand up and your knees buckle and you have to sit back down again, you’ve had too much.

When you get so tired that all you want to do is take a nap, that’s your body’s natural cutoff switch for how much cannabis you can smoke during that session.

It’s pretty harmless, except in rare situations bad stuff can make you reallllly paranoid.

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53

Acer . . . Currently, in the U.S., there is no standardized testing in any state. Teapot wrote about “regulated doses” which currently do not exist, and plenty of testing (in various states) has already shown that producers aren’t producing standardized product. It’s not a problem that exists only in CO.

You may want to go back and reread how I wrote what I wrote to you:

When I said, “the same is true of anything bought in California,” I was referring to the fact that everything in the U.S. falls under the same law - which isn’t regulating.

I never wrote that you won’t ever get a product that matches the label. I wrote that under current law, you have absolutely no guarantee of it.

54

Huge caveat:

If someone has any booze in their system, a small amount of weed consumed afterwards will multiply the effect of the booze, so that a legal BAC could still result in significant impairment.

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But they SHOULD be called on-purposes. People tailgate, they swerve and veer and run red lights and then when something finally happens they have the nerve to call it an “accident.”

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57

Wait, you’re forgetting that something like 1/3 of that tailgating and swerving is caused by inconsiderate idiots doing 10, 15 or even 20km/h less (not unusual in my town in 80km/h zones) than the posted limit in the fast lane, right next to another doofus doing exactly the same speed. If these turkeys would get to the outside where they belong, things would run a hell of a lot smoother. I’m seriously considering printing out KEEP LEFT UNLESS OVERTAKING, FFS in mirrored writing to stick along the top of my windscreen.

Some of us are trying to get somewhere, and these days it’s like every day is bloody Sunday.

To rub it in, half of these bozos are piloting bloody 2.5tonne tanks you can’t see past. There should be a special license required to drive these fucking roadblock battering-rams.

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58

I dunno, GenPop Dunning-Krueger + stoned + 1d8 impairment bonus for “safer than alcohol” arrogance factor = ?

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59

Having worked with a lot of clients who appear to essentially be self-medicating some level of ADHD, I am sure that’s the case.

What I’m not sure of is whether performance in one area (executive functioning, analytic reasoning, hyperfocus, etc.) translates into performance in another area (risk evaluation, gross motor skills, spacial perception, etc.) as well as one might like to think.

60

Well, I bothered to follow one of @Krymsun’s links: The very first hotlink. At that location, I chose the very first quoted study:

“20 years of study has concluded that marijuana smokers may actually have fewer accidents than other drivers.” – 4AutoInsuranceQuote.com; Reasons why marijuana users are safe drivers, 2012

I followed it, and then I followed that link to the Nat’l Highway Transportation Safety Administration (by their link), and ran a search for a study on driving under the influence of cannabis. I found this report first.

It says:

The literature indicates that chemical tests of drivers in crashes were performed most often for narcotics, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, cocaine, amphetamines, and cannabis. The range and means of the percentage of fatally-injured drivers who were positive for these drugs in the North American studies we reviewed are shown above in Figure 5-1. Cannabis had the highest percentages, ranging from 7% to 37% with a mean of 14%. The mean percentages of each of the other five drugs amounted to about 5% or less.

In fact, except in one foreign case, where there are very few studies on cannabis and lots of studies on other drugs, cannabis seemed to be the riskier drug over and over. It’s only in comparison to alcohol that cannabis is a safer bet. This wasn’t a scare publication sent out to high schools, this was an internal publication on impaired driving. So, for now, I’m going to say, that I’m satisfied real risk exists - as it does with any form of impairment.

61

Focusing on one task isn’t really the problem with being stoned. It may actually help with that, and I’m not disagreeing with the people who propose they function better that way. The problem is that driving requires a different skill set, and overly focusing on one thing isn’t a good thing while driving. You need to be able to react to the unexpected.

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