Is it relevant that the study only relates to medical marijuana users?
Who uses medical marijuana? I thought it was only cancer patients. Am I wrong?
Cancer patients tend to be a little older than a typical pothead or drunk driver. And a person dealing with a major medical problem is probably a lot more mature.
So it’s not a fair comparison. Who is the better driver:
a mature person, under the influence of marijuana, driving home from the hospital at 8:00pm,
or a young person, under the influence of alcohol, driving home from a bar at 2:00 am.
Perhaps the fact that the people in the state are okay with medical marijuana were already going to experience a decline in accidents anyways, and the causation is that they care more about health and safety.
Or maybe marijuana does inhibit you, but less so that alcohol, and medical marijuana gives sick people the opportunity to use marijuana to help them rather than self-medicate with alcohol.
Or maybe people who are stoned are currently more likely to try to compensate for their impairment, but, as marijuana use increases, they will become more complacent and deficiencies will again be observed. I mean, I know people who drive slower when they are slightly inebriated by alcohol, too.
Then I did read the study, and was even less impressed.
Listen, I’m all for legalization, especially since the medicinal properties of marijuana are pretty well documented - and no, I don’t mean it’ll cure cancer, or make you smarter. But it is a natural painkiller and appetite stimulant, among other uses, so sure, why the hell not? It certainly isn’t any worse than alcohol, as recreational drugs go. But when people start making wild claims about pot making you a better driver, smarter, healthier, etc., the people who need convincing about legalization start tuning out. Shit, I start tuning out.
For someone to try to put an official-sounding “corporate study” spin on the frat-boy argument of “pot makes you drive slower, so it makes you drive safer, brah!” - is not only downright stupid, it’s irresponsible. But to be honest, many of those vociferous defenders of legalization whom I’ve met make equally stupid and irresponsible claims around the health benefits pot-smoking beyond the palliative care uses that are generally recognized. Claims like, “it grows brain cells” or “it cures cancer”, both of which I saw on Facebook recently (geez I have some stupid FB friends).
I don’t think it can be argued that marijuana impairs a person’s ability to drive to some extent. However, that could be said of driving while tired, angry, eating, talking to the passenger, etc. It seems to be documented fairly well through studies like this one(pdf) that people are able to recognize the impairment and compensate for it.