Just make dope legal and all of our problems will go up in smoke.
Posted on 02/05/2014 2:31:33 PM PST by Responsibility2nd
SEATTLE (CBS Seattle) – According to a recent study, fatal car crashes involving pot use have tripled in the U.S.
“Currently, one of nine drivers involved in fatal crashes would test positive for marijuana,” Dr. Guohua Li, director of the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at Columbia, and co-author of the study told HealthDay News.
Researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health gathered data from six states – California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and West Virginia – that perform toxicology tests on drivers involved in fatal car accidents. This data included over 23,500 drivers that died within one hour of a crash between 1999 and 2010.
Li reported in the study that alcohol contributed to about 40 percent of traffic fatalities throughout the decade.
The researchers found that drugs played an increasing role in fatal traffic accidents. Drugged driving accounted for more than 28 percent of traffic deaths in 2010, which is 16 percent more than it was in 1999. The researchers also found that marijuana was the main drug involved in the increase. It contributed to 12 percent of fatal crashes, compared to only 4 percent in 1999.
“If a driver is under the influence of alcohol, their risk of a fatal crash is 13 times higher than the risk of the driver who is not under the influence of alcohol,” Li said. “But if the driver is under the influence of both alcohol and marijuana, their risk increased to 24 times that of a sober person.”
Researchers found that the increase in marijuana use occurred across all ages for males and females.
Jonathan Adkins, deputy executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, told HealthDay News that marijuana impairs driving in much the same way that alcohol does.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattle.cbslocal.com ...
So if you’re drunk,high and texting, which gets the credit?
What a surprise!
No way! Everybody knows it’s a “victimless drug!”
Fatality Triple Play
Now I am wondering if the woman who nearly t-boned me because her face was buried in an Egg McMuffin had the munchies.
You ain’t seen nuthin till your down on McMuffin and your’re sure to be changin your ways.
Crash this way...
It is as much a victimless drug as alcohol is. Note that even this study does not argue that someone who is on marijuana is necessarily more likely to crash than a driver who is intoxicated.
She tol’ me to
Crash this way!
Sure, I can see it now. The McMuffin defense.
Just make dope legal and all of our problems will go up in smoke.
Obama says this marijuana is a good thing. I must believe!!
This doesn’t surprise me. 30 years ago, I would come home from work, smoke half a joint, and sit down behind my pedal steel for a couple hours of serious practicing. but soon I could only take a couple tokes. And then,,,, just one toke made me nervous! I thought, “This is no longer fun and relaxing” and I quit. Today’s pot hybrids are so insanely strong! No thanks.
Not that I want to see people get killed in car crashes, but let social Darwinism swallow the states who legalize marijuana.
Yeah, what a shocker....
I’m stunned!
As I keep telling people, 50% of the drivers in severe injury accidents involving teenagers in Florida test positive for (high concentrations of, i.e., recent use) marijuana. And it’s not even legal yet.
The numbers could have been much higher but many of those who were high on pot couldn’t find their cars and took a cab home.
CC
Looking at the chart, the death rate peaked at the end of Prohibition and then began a multi-year decline.
Correlation is not causation. For years, the surprising statistics were that marijuana users were far less likely to be involved in vehicle accidents.
It was attributed to the physiological effects of the drug, which led marijuana users to drive slower and more carefully. Almost exclusively, when a marijuana impaired driver was in an accident, they had also been drinking alcohol.
This current study just shows that they had marijuana in their system, which can be there as much as two weeks after use, though after a few hours it no longer intoxicates.
In the study itself, the “tripling” is that of causative effects, in that in 1999, a mere 4% of accidents cited that marijuana was a causative factor, which has now risen to 12%.
This means about 1 in 8. So what were the causative factors in the other 7 in 8?
Collateral damage for a liberal world.
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