Pot-Positive Traffic Fatalities Up 100% in Colorado

Cybercast News Service ^ | November 26, 2014 - 9:48 AM | Cully Stimson

[Olog-hai]

… The data coming out of Colorado is exhibit A on why voters should reject legalization efforts. Even the Democratic governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper, said that legalizing marijuana in Colorado was “reckless.” As I have written at Heritage, pot-positive traffic fatalities have gone up 100 percent since voters legalized pot in Colorado. This is true despite the fact that overall traffic fatalities in Colorado have gone down since 2007.

A report by a federal grant-funded agency in Colorado found seven specific negative side effects that pot legalization has caused in Colorado:

1. the majority of DUI drug arrests involve marijuana;
2. youth consumption of marijuana has increased;
3. drug-related suspensions/expulsions increased 32 percent over a 5-year period and a majority was for marijuana;
4. an increase in college users;
5. almost 50 percent of Denver arrestees tested positive for marijuana;
6. marijuana-related emergency room visits increased 57 percent from 2011-2013; and
7. marijuana-related hospitalizations has increased 82 percent since 2008.

Perhaps people are also aware of new scientific studies pointing to the inherent dangers of marijuana. For example, the British health research journal The Lancet Psychiatry recently concluded that teens who smoke marijuana are “also 60 percent less likely to graduate college and seven times more likely to attempt suicide.” …

[stephenjohnbanker]

I hear you.

[stephenjohnbanker]

Just mostly lefties, not all.

[jonascord]

When I was young and stupid, I would go to the local bars in Chicago. I would not like to have to count how many times I watched two drunks flail away at each other over some imagined slight.

My now long dead brother was a stoner, and I would see his bunch sit there, for hours on end, having "intellectual" conversations, (Like Democrats do.), and you could total up all the IQ in the room and still not reach 100. I wasn't very welcome, since I didn't toke, and that's always suspicious to a stoner.

Booze enhances anger, pot allows the Stupid gene total control, while blocking anger. I can't see the fun in either.

[GOPsterinMA]

Yep...

[GOPsterinMA]

Ruben Tejada: A man & his irma.

[ConservingFreedom]

Booze enhances anger, pot allows the Stupid gene total control, while blocking anger. I can't see the fun in either.

I know which one is less fun for innocent bystanders.

[ConservingFreedom]

ROTFL! Well spotted! I'm looking forward to hearing how smoking pot causes whiplash ... but I won't hold my breath.

[NFHale]

“...after they stayed for several months without paying rent,...”

WTF?? How can you stay on someone else’ property without paying your rent/lease??? If I don’t pay my mortgage, the “owner” (Bank) comes and takes my house.

[HiTech RedNeck]

These huge laundry lists with sweeping claims... sometimes I wonder if it is trolling.

Pot dulls a brain. Some people smoke it. Others get their doctors to prescribe pills.

[Impy]

Welcome to renting in Chicago, evicting is not easy. The cops totally took their side. When they left one day he chained up the front gate, the cops let them cut the chain and break it, that’s right they called the cops and they came and gave them permission to break in. They only left when he cut off the power and gas. He still has to go to court because they called “building inspectors”.

When I was a kid he rented to charming couple on welfare (even though they both had jobs and left their kids alone all the time). He and my uncle ended up in jail when the *itch said he attacked her with a bottle (I don’t know why my uncle was pinched too, the cops tricked him into walking outside and then arrested him). And when they finally left he had to train a shotgun on em to keep them from stealing the refrigerator. After that he didn’t rent again for 15 years, he needs the bread.

If a Chi Cop shot some thug in self-defense, I don’t know who’s side I’d take.

[chris37]

I never said that only lefties smoke weed.

I am a righty, and I smoked weed for 20 years straight.

But during that time of smoking, I often listened to Rush Limbaugh, and he is absolutely the foundation of my conservatism, and I am quite sure that my being stoned opened my mind to his philosophies.

But most young people in this country who get high are doing so while being bombarded by lunatic left wing professors, and guess what...

You ever smoke weed and sit around with a group of friends and talk about deep things that might otherwise not necessarily be topics of conversation?

If you haven’t, that’s fine, I’m just asking. but I don’t say things on this topic just to be talking out of my a$$. I have a lot of experience with drugs and people who use drugs, and though I may have a lot of faults, dishonesty is not one of them.

[GOPsterinMA]

“If a Chi Cop shot some thug in self-defense, I don’t know who’s side I’d take.”

I’ll answer that this way: I always though Rambo wasn’t wrong in “First Blood”.

[Secret Agent Man]

that guy was probably an alcoholic for years. organ failure at that level takes years to develop. one overdose of a hardcore drug and you can die. ask heath ledger. it’s far easier to happen to b/c nobody knows exactly what potency crap they are snorting or injecting. or what’s been added to it.

[Secret Agent Man]

society after seeing the obvious problems allowing it, can also change things back.

[chris37]

It can, but has not.

[Secret Agent Man]

the future hasn’t occurred yet and perhaps not enough innocent people are dead yet to drive the change back. i tell you a few politicians get personally affected by this and you can be damn sure it will begin in earnest.

[Ken H]

Per the Tenth Amendment, intrastate marijuana regulation belongs to the individual states, rather than fedgov or 'society'.

Agreed?

[chris37]

It started near the end of his high school, and he died at 27.

But speaking of Ledger, I have found his case curious for some time now, because during my pill addiction, I did combinations and amounts that dwarfed what he did, yet he is gone and I remain.

That is one that I can’t figure out other than to say it was not my time yet, and God still has some purpose for me.

Combinations of benzodiazepines, anti-histamines and opiates are absolutely lethal, and yet somehow I survived and he did not.

I was sad when he died. Even though I know he was a lib, and that we would agree on nothing, knowing what I know about my habits at the time, I kind felt like it shoulda been me instead.

That dude was not trying to kill himself on drugs, but I was.

I’m glad I failed in that effort though.

[Uncle Miltie]

Pot was made legal by voters in Co in Nov 2012... but was not available that year. Authors argument on traffic fatalities due to the law fails.

[chris37]

Maybe, bit I don’t know. I have often thought that many pols are drug users themselves.

Thing is though laws don’t make the substances, the behaviors or the addicts go away at all.

Laws are utterly useless in that regard.

Heck, you can get any drug you want in prison.