I'm not sure if that would work in practice. As mentioned, alcohol makes someone more confident, or more likely to do stupid things. The test should incorporate that.

From another point of view, the alcohol tricks you into thinking your reflexes are still normal, while they are not. And this is the dangerous part, not the fact that your reflexes are somewhat lower (and perhaps comparable to an old lady who is still perfectly capable to drive safely).

Reminds me of the "say the alphabet backwards" challenge that cops often present in sobriety tests.

Drunk: ZYX... ZYXW... wait-wait... okay, ZYXTW, ummm...

Sober: I can't do that.

Stoned: Oh whaaat? No way, man. I can't even do that sober - shit, I mean...

The field sobriety and breathalyzer tests are just excuses to get suspected DWIs into the drunk tank nowadays.

Once there they'll draw blood for drug and blood-alcohol testing. That's the test that will be used in court if it gets that far.

>I'm also quite sure that you could train for soberty tests

Not a doctor but I don't know that you could fake out a Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus Test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_sobriety_testing

I wonder how a cop would react if you started singing the alphabet backwards.

In fact I think it's mostly not a test they use, or if it is it's to see how the person handles it, not that they can actually do it.

Because refusing to obey a police officer who's considering arresting you is such a sober decision.

I honestly think the best solution would be to regulate the current traffic laws better - including things such as speed limits, yeilding to pedestrians, keeping distance ahead of you (don't know if that is a law) and other things. Not only is this going to help catch people too impaired to be driving, but folks that are simply not paying attention to the road and trying to multi-task while driving.

Full disclosure: I have been pulled over and arrested for "driving while ability impaired" (essentially the non-alcohol DUI)

When I was going to school in upstate NY, I was pulled over as I drove my friend home. The cop thought we smelled like weed (fair enough, my friend had some on him, I was sober and not holding). So he pulls me out of the car and makes me do a "field sobriety test" which consisted of the following (no joke):

-Standing on one leg for 10 seconds

-Walking in a straight line in the dark while he flashed a light at you like a strobe

-Having to close your eyes and then open them when you "thought" 30 seconds had passed

-Having to recite as much as the alphabet backwards as you can

I'm not a coordinated person in general but I had never been pulled over or issued a traffic ticket before. But they then use this circus act as the basis to say "Hey, time for a blood test because you might be high" and then they take you to a hospital. You can refuse the blood test but you get your license suspended for like a month immediately and I needed to drive to work and school. I hadn't smoked in a bit so I thought I'd be good for the blood test and that I'd be fine in court. Of course, it's fallacious to use the blood sample because it can have trace THC from days ago. So you, like I did, can get slapped with a charge based on the fact that you smoked last weekend and then - how dare you - decided to drive days after the fact.

I had to go to court and then was found guilty based on this erroneous evidence. I had to go to "addiction counseling" where the psych told me I exhibited absolutely no addictive symptoms yet I still had to attend. I got one of my scholarships revoked simply based on the charges against me. I had to pay fines and then sign statements at the end of my "counseling" that I would refrain from drug use and be a productive member of society (it actually was worded like that).

I'm not really sure what the solution is. It will be interesting to see what the accident rates / fatalities from stoned drivers are in the coming years. All I know is the current system is a farce and only used to drive revenue to the state.

"Keep your head straight, follow the pen with your eyes as I move it left and right".

"Based on your eyes twitching when you got to the edge of the field of vision, I would like to breathalyze you".

Oh, look. 0.0. Perhaps my eye response was due to the fact that I was standing near your patrol car, and as I looked that way, my eyes had to adjust from 2am darkness to high intensity, strobing lights.

Unable to book me for DUI, he ticketed me for disobeying a traffic signal (which I later contested and won).

Still had the gall to tell me "You got off lucky tonight".

So legal weed is driving us all to be pot heads, right? I mean, look at us: kindly middle age couple who are nice to animals and pay their taxes, and now they're smoking that whacky weed on the weekends! Meh, we're not the ones you needed to worry about in the first place. If it ain't weed, we'd be in Woodinville on Sunday doing wine tastings and driving home after (well, we wouldn't, but I see it every weekend). Our community is much better off if instead my wife and I sit home on a Saturday night smoking a bowl and playing video games.

Are we representative? I have absolutely no idea. But surely we're not the only two people in the entire state of WA who said, after the retail stores opened, "ya know, haven't bought a 1/4 ounce in decades, but I used smoke weed back in the day and I kind of enjoyed it. Now that it's legal, think I'll swing by that new store on the way home tomorrow."

Based on my observations at one Washington state dispensary, at least half of the customers are in their 60's or 70's. I asked the woman behind the counter about it and she told me that many of them are seeking relief from chronic pain and/or cancer treatments.

* Pharma (because of the amazing and un-patentable medical applications of it)

* Private Criminal Justice and Police Unions (Marijuana is one of the easiest things to make an arrest on--private prisons profit, probation companies profit, inmate phone services, phone providers, ankle bracelet companies, police equipment companies, etc. all profit. For Police Unions, marijuana-related crimes accounting for a sizable percentage of police stops and arrests, legal weed means less jobs and potentially lower pay. Additionally, Marijuana is easy to identify from a distance due to smell, and gives an officer probable cause to make a stop and search for other illegal activity)

* Paper/Textiles (Hemp!)

* Alcohol (Legal weed potentially means a loss of sales for the only major legal intoxicant.)

* Tobacco (Legal weed means something for people to smoke that isn't a cigarette.)

Some of these industries are shifting. Big Tobacco, for example, seems to be trying to join the party, and has made some moves that indicate a desire to enter the industry. I think Paper and Textiles either will come around or already are, as I think Hemp could be easily incorporated into the existing industry.

But yeah, I believe that Big Pharma is as big of a part of this as police unions and Big Criminal Justice.

Though it could very well be an attempt to avoid becoming California, where the doctor next door to the dispensary will write you one up if you complain about your chronic hangnails.

Also have some friends in Denver who started back up after it became legal.

Just some more anecdotal 'evidence' to go off of.

Stop smoking weed? That doesn't sound at all worth the trouble.

If anything, my experience with the state and it's drug prohibition, has made me want to smoke even more weed. Fuck the hick country cops who made me recite the alphabet backwards. Fuck the school admin who revoked my scholarship. I make six figures and travel the world for my job and for my pleasure and I smoke as much weed as I want.

If I may get personal for a second, weed is the only thing that has helped with my depression and schizophrenia. I had several depressive episodes in my life, from when I was young to my late teens and spent time in a mental facility. However, since I've started smoking habitually I have not had a single episode and feel hundreds of times better than I ever have.

Was it worth all the trouble? Honestly, yes. I learned about what matters in my life and I learned to take responsibility for my choices, which means yes, I am going to keep smoking weed for as long as I want because I'd rather stay out of my depression and focused on living the best, most meaningful life I can despite whatever bylaws are forced on me.

There is no scientific evidence to suggest that OP has "just been lucky". There is also no evidence to suggest that OP is a threat to him/herself or anyone else; they simply noted that they had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Also, Bupropion is an anti-depressant, not an anti-psychotic. And Xanax is a strong Benzodiazepine and also not in any way an antipsychotic. So the conditions that OP was treating were basically depression and anxiety, which scientific evidence shows Cannabis has positive impact on both.

Now, this should provide all of the evidence needed to contradict your ridiculousness, but, in case it doesn't, YES, certain constituent compounds of Cannabis DO INDEED treat schizophrenia (and, again, your insinuation that anyone claimed it /did/ treat schizophrenia is a bit illogical for reasons above). See here for more info: https://www.projectcbd.org/schizophrenia

CBD is a potent anti-psychotic and antianxiety/anticonvulsant. Granted, it's present in small relative amounts to THC in most strains, but CBD supplements are available in all of the Medical states. I take them almost daily for anxiety and anti-inflammatory reasons.

About 10 years ago, as an adult never having tried any illicit substances, I started using cannabis and found marked improvement in my mood and focus. Since then, smoking weed every few days, I have had zero "episodes", I am happy most of the time, am in a stable long-term relationship with a new child and am generally a productive member of society.

I have tried to research scientific studies that explain these results but have always found the corpus lacking. I think these interactions definitely deserve more exploration.

This is true of drunk driving too. I don't think that means we just shouldn't try to impose any restrictions...

If we don't have the science, technology, nor a fair way to test, I'm not sure how making pot-specific laws is going to help do anything other than make people feel like something has been done.

At least with better controls and better general laws, it makes everyone safer. People that can't drive accordingly, regardless of any drug, probably shouldn't be driving at all.

I think the article is pretty misleading but the conclusion is clear: "There's plenty of evidence showing that marijuana use impairs key driving skills. If you get really stoned and then get behind the wheel, you're asking for trouble.".

The problem is that the legal thresholds for THC are so low that "stone drivers" are not actually stone, making the whole federal study flawed.

Here: "Several states have passed laws attempting to define "marijuana-impaired driving" similarly to drunk driving. Colorado, for instance, sets a blood THC threshold of 5 nanograms per milliliter. But that number tells us next to nothing about whether a person is impaired or fit to drive. "

If you look at the data, "any illegal drug" is also not correlated with more accidents.

While the conclusion is clear, it's also misleading. No one disputes that you can get too stoned to drive, that isn't the issue that matters. What matters is whether those too stoned to drive drive anyway like they do on alcohol. Anecdotally from decades of experience I can say they don't, pot doesn't destroy your ability to judge your state of mind so there's no reason to treat it with special exceptions like we do for alcohol. Most long term smokers drive while high, but not while impaired. High != impaired just as drinking one beer doesn't destroy your ability to drive safely.

It really doesn't matter the age, ability, or whatever - as long as a person CAN reach the minimum requirements to drive on the road, they should be allowed to chose to do so. I don't see a need to discriminate by any means other than performance.

Or do you mean the quick and dirty 'field sobriety tests' that many police offers use? I'm not aware of those being actual standards or tests so much as quick and dirty tools to justify the effort of /actual/ standards tests (BTW, I recall hearing that you should always demand the blood test over the breath tests).

I think there might be some debate over variance of correlation among different ethnicity and experience level of particular users, but I cannot recall any actual disagreement about the current legal BAC limits being close enough for the general population.

However that is the point being made by the parent article; that while presence of alcohol in someone's blood does have that strong scientific correlation there is as yet no strong scientific correlation for any of the legal limits currently in place.

As a followup question, what would be the point of making that distinction?

People with better reflexes might drive less conservatively due to their reflexes, and may continue to do so even while impaired.

The problem is that it's way too invasive for people to sign up for it voluntarily - not to mention you'd cause a bunch of sudden stops for no reason and maybe create more accidents than you prevent.

Wow. So you're also a big supporter of the massive, real-time surveillance infrastructure required to make this possible, then.

Don't think for a minute that those devices (which will inevitably be required in all human-driven cars... for as long as humans are allowed to drive cars, that is) won't be reporting those findings to insurance companies and of course, to one's friendly local police department -- and by extension, all police departments nationwide -- once in place.

We simply don't need that; this presume driving while high is a problem that needs solving and it quite simply isn't. There's no evidence to justify treating pot special like we do alcohol and specifically testing for it.