Driving High: 5 Studies on Marijuana Motoring

It is extremely true that there is no greater test case for the legal use of marijuana than the State of California since 1996. Compared to the size and complexity of this real world experiment, these isolated medical tests -- usually politically motivated -- are pretty laughable, especially one's that don't account for all the factors pointed out by the commenter below. (How do these tests account for all the people who are appalling bad drivers when they are stone cold sober?) Most of the studies aren't even worth making fun of. Except this:

 "...30 percent of all drivers who were killed in motor vehicle crashes in California in 2010 tested positive for legal and/or illegal drugs, a percentage that has been increasing since 2006."

When I read that, I just think: "What is the other 70%'s excuse?" Of course, it is also the poorest kind of crap science because it doesn't bother to say whether or not the operator of the vehicle was in any way responsible for the accident. Does it count if someone was sitting at a stop light and got rear-ended from behind? It reminds me of a joke my friends and I had in high school: I was once sitting in a parked car smoking a joint with a friend when a gigantic electrical storm began. Since we were the only car in this big open parking lot, we wondered if we might be hit by lightning. We joked that if we got fried by lightning, the police would find the joint we were smoking in the wreckage and the headlines would scream "ANOTHER DRUG RELATED DEATH!" Apparently, that wasn't actually a joke after all. Not if Father Romero has anything to say about it.

The facts of California's legal marijuana policy stand alone, and as was pointed out below, they go like this: No net rise in traffic fatalities. The end.

As I have remarked before, for an alternative weekly to be running an ongoing anti-marijuana campaign in a state where large amounts of the population favor legalization is the weirdest thing about this paper.

It is extremely true that there is no greater test case for the legal use of marijuana than the State of California since 1996. Compared to the size and complexity of this real world experiment, these isolated medical tests -- usually politically motivated -- are pretty laughable, especially ones that don't account for all the factors pointed out by the commenter below. (How do these tests account for all the people who are appallingly bad drivers when they are stone cold sober?) Most of the studies aren't even worth making fun of. Except this:

 "...30 percent of all drivers who were killed in motor vehicle crashes in California in 2010 tested positive for legal and/or illegal drugs, a percentage that has been increasing since 2006."When I read that, I just think: "What is the other 70%'s excuse?" Of course, it is also the poorest kind of shit science because it doesn't bother to say whether or not the operator of the vehicle was in any way responsible for the accident. It reminds me of a joke my friends and I had in high school: I was once sitting in a parked car smoking a joint with a friend when a gigantic electrical storm began. Since we were the only car in this big open parking lot, we wondered if we might be hit by lightning. We joked that if we got fried by lightning, the police would find the joint we were smoking in the wreckage and the headlines would scream "ANOTHER DRUG RELATED DEATH!" Apparently, that wasn't actually a joke after all. Not if Father Romero has anything to say about it.The facts of California's legal marijuana policy stand alone, and as was pointed out below, they go like this: No net rise in traffic fatalities. The end.Also, legally accessible marijuana did not render California lawless. (Lowest crime levels in LA since the 1950's, so it is pretty difficult to claim that it has made crime worse.) It also did not render the state dysfunctional. Prop 13 and the Reagan Revolution already took care of that.As I have remarked before, for an alternative weekly to be running an ongoing anti-marijuana campaign in a state where large amounts of the population favor legalization is the weirdest thing about this fucking paper.

'Using data showing that "traffic fatalities fall by nearly 9 percent after the legalization of medical marijuana" in states such as California'

This is the most reliable data on the subject - There issimply no study-value to a positive test (blood-urine) considering thetime/days THC is stored in the body. Impairment and testing positive are entirelytwo separate matters! Then, consider age, driving experience and even tolerancelevels to Marijuana and there are simply too many variables. I do not want tobe sharing the road with high teenagers that's for sure - but the basic datasuggests there is NO increase in MV accidents - after medical approvals in California.I would suggest Cali is the perfect test model for that study - considering thetraffic levels and medical pot consumption exceeds any global model you cancompare it with.

Stay Thirsty My Friends...