Drug-driving deaths more than double in US

[jonny5]

I am all for legalization, but not until there is a accurate nationwide universally accepted way of doing roadside testing for "DUI"

People should not have to pay fines, or go to jail for having pot when they use it in a responsible manner.

There is. Get out and walk a straight line.

 

[calamity]

There is. Get out and walk a straight line.

Walking straight lines is not a problem on pot. Easy, actually, for a high person to walk a straight line. Harder though is trying to answer rapid fire questions.

 

[beerftw]

I'd like to know what "recently" exactly means and how they determined it as marijuana can stay in the bodies blood for days after use.

That being said, people get intoxicated and then drive, that is nothing new.

It can actually stay months, depending on smoking habits, a casual smoker who wmokes maybe a few times a month would be clean a few days after, while a heavy smoker who smokes every night after work might have it for a month, chronic smokers who smoke it every hour awake have peaked at around six months in their system.

It is metabolized in the body, and introducing at rate rate faster than can be processed means it stays in the system longer. In texas most cops seem to do either breathalyzer or blood tests. Most of the time if someone is in an accident and a piss test is used, mj shows up for a while, and even someone prescribed vicodin who uses it after hours for pain would show up hot on a test, but not give a timeline.

Because of this most judges laugh when a piss test is offered as proof of a dui or dwi, while a blood test would show what was in your system at that moment, rather than what was there two weeks ago.

 

[jonny5]

Walking straight lines is not a problem on pot. Easy, actually, for a high person to walk a straight line. Harder though is trying to answer rapid fire questions.

I was being simplistic. Point is there is a standard test as to whether someone is able to drive a car safely. It doesnt matter if youve used drugs, alcohol, or are simply distracted.

 

[calamity]

I was being simplistic. Point is there is a standard test as to whether someone is able to drive a car safely. It doesnt matter if youve used drugs, alcohol, or are simply distracted.

Don't forget tired.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that drowsy driving was responsible for 72,000 crashes, 44,000 injuries, and 800 deaths in 2013.4 However, these numbers are underestimated and up to 6,000 fatal crashes each year may be caused by drowsy drivers.

Drowsy Driving: Asleep at the Wheel | Features | CDC

 

[jonny5]

Don't forget tired.

Exactly.

 

[Ikari]

Impaired Drivers = wrecks. More MJ users... more chance of impaired drivers.

WHOOOSH common sense just skull ****ed your post.

But science and statistics did not. It's not that easy to determine if one was stoned at the time of an accident since THC stays in the body for so long.

 

[faithful_servant]

Drug-driving deaths more than double in US


What a shock, high people killing more people on the roads....


[/FONT][/COLOR]http://www.today.com/health/driving-while-high-marijuana-causing-spike-fatal-accidents-t91746

I don't get the desire or demand to legalize pot, do you WANT to kill people? FFS what is wrong with the lot of you?[/FONT][/COLOR]

It's about privilege being important than responsibilities. People want the privilege to get high, but refuse to accept that the privilege comes with a large responsibility and the people who want that privilege aren't big on responsibility.

 

[faithful_servant]

Debunked here several times already as Chicken Little alarmist claptrap.

"Marijuana-related" does not in any way imply 'marijuana-caused'.

Just keep burying your head in the sand and hope that someone close to you doesn't die in a marijuana related accident...

 

[faithful_servant]

Why does this sound like a gun control argument to me?

It doesn't, since getting high isn't a Constitutional right...

 

[Absentglare]

Reason likes legalization. Common sense says "Let people get high, more will drive. High people don't drive so well."

You can flop around all you want spud, but reality cannot be dismissed with a url link.

Not many more people smoke marijuana after legalization.

Actually, most of the data shows that we're better off.

Colorado, for example, has seen a 6% reduction in fatal highway crashes and reports fewer teens using marijuana after legalization, not to mention considerable revenue.

http://www.drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/Revenue_Up_Crime_Down_MJ_Legalization_CO_and_WA.pdf

"Given the consequences of marijuana arrest, including fines, jail time, a criminal record, loss of student loans and other federal aid, and court costs, getting arrested for marijuana use may be more harmful than the drug itself — at any age. The report recommends adopting the best of both approaches and moving toward full legalization."

Reforming marijuana laws: Which approach best reduces the harms of criminalization? ? Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice

 

[Absentglare]

It doesn't, since getting high isn't a Constitutional right...

So you're happy with the government confiscating all freedom that isn't explicitly enumerated in the constitution ?

I completely disagree.

 

[DA60]

I don't care if it rises fifty times in so far as legalization is concerned.

What I put in my body is NONE of the government's business and all recreational drugs (with the possible exception of heroin - not sure) should be legal.

You do the right thing first and then worry about the consequences...not the other way around.

And the right thing is freedom...the legalization of recreational drugs.

 

[Renae]

I don't care if it rises fifty times in so far as legalization is concerned.

What I put in my body is NONE of the government's business and all recreational drugs (with the possible exception of heroin - not sure) should be legal.

You do the right thing first and then worry about the consequences...not the other way around.

And the right thing is freedom...the legalization of recreational drugs.

Yeah, **** traffic safety and other peoples shattered lives, I wanna get HIGH BABY!

 

[faithful_servant]

So you're happy with the government confiscating all freedom that isn't explicitly enumerated in the constitution ?

I completely disagree.

I never said that... I said that comparing this issue to the 2nd Amendment is dishonest, because one is a Constitutional right, while the other is nothing more than whining children wanting to get high and to hell with being responsible.

 

[SDET]

I am all for legalization, but not until there is a accurate nationwide universally accepted way of doing roadside testing for "DUI"

People should not have to pay fines, or go to jail for having pot when they use it in a responsible manner.

Roadside testing for drugs or alcohol should only happen under probable cause. Roadblocks are not the thing of a free society.

 

[SDET]

I don't care if it rises fifty times in so far as legalization is concerned.

What I put in my body is NONE of the government's business and all recreational drugs (with the possible exception of heroin - not sure) should be legal.

You do the right thing first and then worry about the consequences...not the other way around.

And the right thing is freedom...the legalization of recreational drugs.

Dead people have no freedom.

 

[RetiredUSN]

Roadside testing for drugs or alcohol should only happen under probable cause. Roadblocks are not the thing of a free society.

obviously?

 

[Absentglare]

I never said that... I said that comparing this issue to the 2nd Amendment is dishonest, because one is a Constitutional right, while the other is nothing more than whining children wanting to get high and to hell with being responsible.

You're saying that this argument isn't like the gun control argument because of the second amendment.

That's not a sound argument. You cannot simply throw out an analogy with one distinction. The parallels persist with or without unrelated distinctions.

An analogy is not dishonest, it is simply an analogy. The interesting part is that there are certainly similarities in the argument, "we want to ban this because we believe it will make us safer even though we cannot demonstrate that." The ridiculous part is that guns are a vehicle to kill other people, while with drugs you're much more likely to kill yourself, so you'd think guns would be the first to ban in such a safety vein.

The argument is philosophical (what should the law be) and not legal (what is the law right now) so the entire complaint (the second amendment) is a non sequitur.

 

[Thoreau72]

Dead people have no freedom.

Likely 'they' have the ultimate freedom.

 

[fmw]

I don't care if it rises fifty times in so far as legalization is concerned.

What I put in my body is NONE of the government's business and all recreational drugs (with the possible exception of heroin - not sure) should be legal.

You do the right thing first and then worry about the consequences...not the other way around.

And the right thing is freedom...the legalization of recreational drugs.

No problem there until you decide to drive a car or a bike or a boat or an ATV while impaired. Then it is the public's business.

 

[Mark V Anderson]

No problem there until you decide to drive a car or a bike or a boat or an ATV while impaired. Then it is the public's business.

Yes, it is everyone's business if you drive when you're stoned and then crash into someone else. I am very much in favor of MJ legalization because the costs of it being illegal far outweigh the slight increase in usage that would result. But it is illegal and should be illegal to drive on public streets when MJ impaired, the same as if you're drunk.

 

[Mr Person]

I don't get the desire or demand to legalize pot, do you WANT to kill people? FFS what is wrong with the lot of you?[/FONT][/COLOR]

1. Drunk drivers and distracted drivers kill vastly more people, but I'm not going to insultingly ask what is wrong with you for not demanding they both be banned.

2. What articles like the two you dug up for purposes of insulting everyone who supports legalization almost always fail to mention is that the "driver who recently used marijuana" and caused a crash was also under the influence of alcohol.

3. Driving simulator controlled studies showed that experienced smokers performed about equal to sober persons in a driving simulator; it was the people who drank who did poorly, with the worst being those who drank and smoked.

4. Legalizing marijuana simply reflects the massive failure of criminalizing it. It didn't work. It gave millions criminal records, which hurt their lifelong job prospects, which then hurt the economy as a whole. It also lead to mass incarceration, which also happened to affect minorities more than others.

5. Marijuana is the safest recreational drug known to man. The only significant harm of note discovered to date is a correlation between lowered adult IQ and chronic heavy use while a minor.

 

[Mr Person]

One bad choice does not justify another... Your line of thinking leads to ever lowering standards, when what we should be pursuing are higher standards. Instead of lowering the bar, we should be raising it.

So, we should keep alcohol and cellphones legal despite the massive amount more accidents they caused, and we should make marijuana even more criminalized despite the fact that that never prevented anything?

What about guns? Or does that fall under "Freedomz"?

 

[Thoreau72]

So, we should keep alcohol and cellphones legal despite the massive amount more accidents they caused, and we should make marijuana even more criminalized despite the fact that that never prevented anything?

What about guns? Or does that fall under "Freedomz"?

The cat is out of the bag, as they used to say. You don't have the option, it's too late, to declare no alcohol or cellphones, they are all over the place.

What people do with them is another matter. :mrgreen: