Re:Studies Link Marijuana Legalization to Positive Public He...
by vladvasiliu on Thursday March 16, 2023 @01:17PM
(#35185029)
> If weed only makes you 5% more likely to get into an accident (compared to, say, 50-75% for alcohol), but legalization causes an additional 10-15% of the population to drive stoned, that's still a statistically significant effect.
Sure, but isn't that also an argument for outlawing alcohol?
Re:Studies Link Marijuana Legalization to Positive Public He...
by zdragnar on Thursday March 16, 2023 @06:53PM
(#35190069)
I don't think I meant "negative effect" in my last paragraph to mean "should remain outlawed", but rather that we need to understand and perhaps plan for the negative consequences of legalization.
The biggest challenge is that there is not yet any procedure that can verify impairment by marijuana. With alcohol, it is easy- any amount over 0.08 and you are legally considered impacted.
With pot, the metabolites stay in your system for weeks. Did you crash because of a genuine accident, or did you crash because you were driving impaired by weed? The police don't have a way to make a distinction with a simple breath / blood test, so it is harder to enforce.
I think you're significantly discounting the number of people who smoke weed while driving. I saw quite a bit of it in college- much more, in fact, than drinking alcohol before driving (never saw some literally drinking while driving, though I know it happens).
Apologies for the completely made up numbers, but I think it is illustrative: If weed only makes you 5% more likely to get into an accident (compared to, say, 50-75% for alcohol), but legalization causes an additional 10-15% of the population to drive stoned, that's still a statistically significant effect.
Real numbers would be useful to draw meaningful conclusions about what to do about it, but I think it's not unreasonable to believe that it will have a negative effect in this regard.