Driving Stoned: Not so Dangerous?

But I smoke Tasmanian Goddess Supreme Ganja, so I CAN drive and eat and listen to killer music, while I talk on my cell phone- puffing all the while. Yes, I have overcome the obstacles to time wasted on the morning commute. Thanks, Tasmanian Ganja!

It's tough to find real statistics relating to pot and driving because there's always strong biases when pot is written about. Anyone who might write about this (who had never actually driven high) would immediately assume that it is a serious danger, similar to driving drunk. Meanwhile, people like myself who have done it hundreds of times are swayed to believe there is no danger at all.

Since this video is someone smoking and taking a driving test, the report seems truer to reality.

my memory is actually that it is. Over the years I do remember reports coming up that tended towards a consistent conclusion. I'm not finding any references though so I don't know if they are still considered to be correct.

The way I remember it went was that the advantage of pot over alcohol is that the the stoned driver tended to be more aware of his impairment and therefore they compensated more. There was frequently just as much danger from the overcompensation. The stereotype was you'd catch an alcoholic doing 80mph in a 35 while you catch a pot head doing 10mph on the freeway. The disadvantage was that the effects of pot lasted a lot longer. Up to 12 hours. The drivers often stopped compensating after they no longer felt high, but their driving was still affected to some degree which varied quite a bit by person. The heavy users generally but not always being less effected. Drunk driving was more dangerous than stoned driving on the whole, but it was still a plenty dangerous thing to do. Especially the next day, because you weren't thinking about it. That's all crap left over from high school though so I have no idea whether it's still considered valid or even if I'm remembering it correctly. some of it was in the anti pot groups piece but again, limited reliability.

umm... 25mph on the freeway != good driving. 25mph on the freeway = Alzheimer's.

Best to leave your left blinker going the entire time for added camouflage. Better yet don;t do it.

I didn't want to show any bias for 'impaired driving' here.

The conversation I was hoping would happen is: what is the definition of impaired driving? No one ever worries about driving after taking Tylenol or Advil. No one worries about driving after eating chocolate (it's psychoactive). No one worries about driving after taking most allergy medications, yet they cause drowsiness. Marijuana always gets grouped with alcohol, especially in this instance. It doesn't seem as similar to alcohol as most would like to think.

they are not a scientific org. They are a propaganda mill. Look at the funding sources.

that's why I put down two opposing propaganda mills. It appears to be a non issue though since I somehow managed to watch a completely different video. I have no explanation for this. My comments do not apply to the video I'm seeing here though.

Posted a link to a forum of experiences for you.

It seems the general consensus amongst those who are frequent pot smokers is that, above all else, it's better to be safe than sorry. You must use very careful judgment before you get behind the wheel. Many people talk about situations where they were too stoned to drive, yet some talk about driving every day for 10+ years without a single accident.

i have been smoking cannabis nearly every day for the past 8 years, i also drive on many of those days and have never been in an accident. the only ticket i have had was for not having a front license plate on my car (which is bullshit). i have driven many thousands of miles in that time and nobody was ever at risk. when i was 15 i got pulled over for a dim headlight at night, was super stoned and didn't have a license to drive at night (only during the day at the time) i still wasn't thought of as a threat. different people definitely have different reactions and experiences involving substances but i would say that "liquid courage" makes for far more dangerous/risky behavior. i drink, but NEVER drink and drive.

I have an oppinion on it and i have life and death issues.. I have been hiv positive and on very toxic medicine for many years. I have also been through the cancer gig with stage three cancer of the head and neck. That involved my tongue , my throat , my neck , my jaw , my tonsils Radiation , chemo. all on top of treatment for hep c with pegalated interfuron and ribovarin. My platelets where so low they had me on shots. I had shots for everything that my body was doing. Pot helped me live through the treatment . It is that simple.

the industry knows that weakness and will market around that.

..O i thought u called me javier. hahahah

Wow. I wish I saw this earlier. I clicked on the link again and it seems I watched an entirely different video. It appears i have an epic retraction to make.

The snippets here aren't meant for a scholarly journal. I've never studied journalism, and I'm far from being a graduate student. The first link you gave is over 13 years old and uses loaded language, claiming that marijuana smoking employees are more likely to have "deviant friends".

It also says that with traffic accidents "the majority of subjects who tested positive for THC also tested positive for alcohol..." No shit! That means that a minority of the drug-related car accidents had only THC in their bloodstream. And of those, only a percentage were actually under the influence--because we know THC can stay in the bloodstream for up to 90 days.

The other source you gave is directly in line with my reason for posting the video:

" 'Crash culpability studies have failed to demonstrate that drivers with cannabinoids in the blood are significantly more likely than drug-free drivers to be culpable in road crashes.' This result is likely because subject under the influence of marijuana are aware of their impairment and compensate for it accordingly..." - From your 2nd link

@ bombastinator

Wow! You can type a phrase into google and click on the first thing you see!

It looks like you're the one who didn't look up any real research... that's why it only took you "all of ten seconds."

The NIDA article is so faulty as to be worthless in determining the effect of marijuana, because of other factors, like alcohol consumption. Statement of sexual preference linked to marijuana are arbitrary and of no ascertainable consequence. No doubt included for titillation. NIDA motives are questionable. Try a little harder next time.

you really are as shallow as you sounded in the first statement.

I don't belittle all the pro pot articles I see on this site. Some of them I even like. I only go after the embarrassingly idiotic ones. The really cripplingly epic fails. The ones full of blatant self interest and stoner logic. That comes to around 40% of them. It's a really high number. The sheer amount of pro pot posts on this site also dwarfs that of most other similar news outlets.

On embarassment:
I believe that the high volume and low quality combine to undermine the credibility of the site for anyone not already in the pro pot camp. I don't have any data for that, it's just a value judgment, but I do feel it is the correct one.

It is possible to for something so badly and in such a blatantly partisan fashion that you actually make things worse. Arguing that it should be OK to drive stoned based on a heavily edited set of home videos? It's even worse than Dick Cheney arguing for waterboarding. His self interest shows through like a beacon.

On shallowness:
Please refine your insult. Are you referring to a lack of knowledge thought or feeling? Specifics Please.

On clicking on the first thing I see in GOOGLE. Yup. Thats it. That I can is not amazing. It's that they can't.

[EDIT] HUGE GIANT ISSUE. I am not seeing the same video here that I did the first time. The first video I saw was a series of clips from two kids, one with a handhold camcorder, not a british documentary. I do not know how this happened but we are not talking about the same video. The epic fail here appears to have been mine.

marijuana legalization somehow got attached to the green category and it has been leaped on by the stupider sections of the legalization movement. I personally find it a major embarrassment.

What is so scary and/or stupid about legalization... or decriminalization? Since the 1930's America has been terrified of this drug.

It isn't the dangerous madness-inducing substance we once thought it was. Doctors would like to prescribe it as medicine, because for many ill people it is the one drug that heals more than it impairs.

Cannabis has the potential to be a very positive light in peoples' lives with a low risk of dependence and no risk for overdose. Why are we allowing these people to go without medicine?

I dont we are worried about marijuana or drugs in general..its the human's inability to stop and overdoing everything that is the problem.

give a person a freepass on anything and they will pervert that right..

and there will always be those corporations that would capitalize on that weakness..

Well, right now drugs are in the hands of many rich violent criminals. Do you think reclassifying pot as the wonderful medicine that it is (instead of a 'drug') and decriminalizing it would be a step in the wrong direction?

The only weakness I see is peoples inability to stay off pro hemp threads if they aren't interested in doing anything but talk it down. Closed minded people who assume that all of us just wanna get high and aren't concerned with mother earth and hemp's positive impact on it, are a large part of this war on freedom.

Oh, yes, indeed. Half the folks on Current think it would be great if drugs were legal.

TEN cheeseburgers? I think I'm gonna hurl...

I don't know if I should laugh or be embarassed. A couple of Canadian guys driving around baked pretending to to be "ghetto" is kinda dumb.

It's this type of crap that gives legislators ammo against those who would seek the legalization of cannabis.

I don't think legislators are going on YouTube to find evidence for or against pot. They ignore doctors, scientists, other politicians, and very ill people...why would they bother looking at comedy videos of the same subject..