Posted on 03/28/2016 7:04:42 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Hawaii lawmakers are asking how much marijuana a driver can safely consume before getting behind the wheel of a car.
It’s an issue they want to tackle now that Hawaii is setting up medical marijuana dispensaries. So Rep. Cindy Evans and 15 other lawmakers introduced a resolution asking the state Department of Health to study whether a person can safely drive while under the influence.
Marijuana is the illicit drug most frequently found in the blood of drivers who have been involved in accidents, including fatal ones, but the role marijuana plays in those accidents is often unclear because it can remain in the bloodstream for days and it’s often combined with alcohol, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says marijuana use impairs cognitive functions, lane tracking and other driving-related skills. …
(Excerpt) Read more at bigstory.ap.org ...
“I think we’re parked, man..”
The problem back in the day was not the amount of doobie smoked. The problem was the guilty party trying to drive while listening to loud yacht rock and eat fritoes and bean dip and drink Dr Pepper all at the same time after the doob smoking. At least that was supposedly the problem back in the day when I used to get reliable info about such dangers. These days I have no idea of what might be the problem, if I ever did know, which I doubt.
I have personally spent an entire 200 mile trip to see a Herbie Hancock concert at 45 mph in a Datsun 240Z on Interstate 80 at the mercy of a driver who had been consuming hashish brownies and thought we were approaching light speed and would not relinquish the driving position to his unenlightened friend.
it really depends on an individual’s tolerance for the drug.
If you have no tolerance, and you smoke some high grade MJ, you are going to pose a danger behind the wheel. At this point, the drug makes it extremely difficult to focus, and it acts as a mild to moderate hallucinogen.
If you have a tolerance, it’s not going to affect your ability to focus that much, but if you are toking your bowl while driving, I’d say it’s about as risky as texting and driving in terms of removing your eyes form the road.
Don’t ask me how I know these things.
That’s like asking how much alcohol is OK while driving. It varies from person to person in reality. A heavy drinker can handle far more than a rare drinker and still drive pretty safely because of their tolerance build up.
They should ask the expert. They can reach him at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Has any state developed a breath test to determine the level of wacky weed for a driver?
If not, and when that happens, they will make it legal in most states. That way they can arrest and collect fines.
I drove it about a year ago now... My wife needed a valium or a big fat joint just riding in the back seat, I can tell you that, she is NOT a good passenger on a curvy road with cliffs off one side and all those one lane bridges were almost her breaking point!
When I was out visiting in California, almost a year ago, I heard a news report talking about a mouth swab test that would pick up thc and determine recent use instead of the blood test that was positive for much longer than the effects of the thc, but not heard any more about it since then.
Soon after Colorado legalized, I read an article that the NTSB had started a program to determine what the safe level was. A couple months later I read a follow up that it was being suspended, because while the people that drank alcohol and smoked marijuana as a whole did much worse after adding the marijuana, a large percentage of the people that just smoked marijuana drove better after they smoked. I knew at that point we would never hear of that study again...
Sounds like a real trip, man.
It’s only big enough if you roll it in 8x11 legal sized paper.
I believe in Colorado if it’s discovered in your car. You are automatically considered to be out.
I hdave no problem with that. Really getting tired of Walt the postman being criminalized for smoking a Dookie. On the weekends.
It takes the edge off the rush hour traffic out here in Bernie Land. (WA)
Define "drink". One or two glasses of wine or beer over an hour and a half with a meal is hardly "drinking". Without food, in a 20 minute span, the same one or two is drinking. Know your own limits and abide by them.
Uh, yea. Explain that to a cop when they ask you if you’ve been drinking.
I have. At one of those checkpoints, where they ask everyone if they've been drinking, I told him I'd had beer with dinner an hour and a half ago. He just waved me on; didn't even ask how many. Another time, though, I was driving to choir rehearsal with my bag of choir music on the passenger seat. The bag started to slide off the seat and I reached over to steady and reset it. I swerved a bit in the lane and was pulled over. I said I was not drinking, but was given the drunk test anyway.
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