:rolleyes: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=156331&goto=newpost
Shit,
How lame is it that I gave you all a link to this site… let me start over:
http://www.realitycheckny.com/
In the GQ thread Reefer Madness Comercial angers me. Stats on DUI Mary Deaths?, I provided links to multiple studies confirming that marijuana in the hands of experienced users poses little-to-no risk on the roads. Inexperienced users drive terribly, but all of the ones I’ve known were too unsure of their abilities to even try.
Why should I trust someone who says: “I drive better when I’m high” or, “I have no problems driving high”? Even if they get high often, all I’m SURE of is that I wouldn’t be able to drive well when messed up. Sure I don’t smoke much at all, but I just don’t feel like giving people the benefit of the doubt on that.
“Little or no” is not too reassuring. I don’t know how this drug effects each individual. I don’t know what medication they’re on, and if the two drugs have any effect on eachother.
Murder suicide.
And that directly supports what I just said. Inexperienced users are bad drivers, and tend not to even bother. You can’t understand how a heavy smoker feels when they’re stoned because it’s not the same feeling you weekend tokers get.
Read studies in the thread I linked to. They’re not hearsay, conjecture, and personal anecdotes about “my cousin who drives great when he’s stoned.” Instead, they offer clear scientific evidence that marijuana doesn’t pose a threat on the roads.
Neutron…
I just want to make sure to point out that I wasn’t trying to argue with your findings.
I live in the Phoenix area, and so does Bil Keane, the cartoonist who draws “The Family Circus.” A few years ago, Phoenix was flooded with billboards depicting Little Billy angrily kicking a can of smokeless tobacco.
Gee, if I were a teenage kid who thought that tobacco was cool, knowing that Little Billy of “The Family Circus” disapproved would sure change my mind!
Have you ever been to a party like that? The doorbell keeps ringing because either A the neighbors are complaining about the noise B more people are showing up for the party or C people are showing up to buy weed.
Each time you see the girl coming back, you see that she is more stoned/drunk* than last time. She is simply getting higher and higher until she reaches the highest you can get and you just veg on the couch. Thing is, the whole thing seems off to me about the way she is acting which makes me think booze is mixed in there as well at the very least.
[sub]*I add drunk in there because I personally have acted that silly as she does and only when stoned AND drunk. Just stoned makes me more inclined to sit wherever I am and watch TV/Jay and Silent Bob and eat Harvest Cheddar Sunchips with a bottle of cola sitting next to me[/sub]
Driving while high is just a bad idea. Period. Talking on a cell phone while driving is a bad idea, too, as is eating, smoking, drinking, or doing anything which distracts you from safely getting from Point A to Point B. I’ll admit it: I’m a bad driver: I’m easily distracted ("Hey, look! Cows!) and any leval of impairment would shift me into the Dangerous Driver category.
Not to mention if you end up in an accident. Even if it’s not your fault, you could get in a heap of trouble if the police officer thinks that you’re impaired.
In thiscase the defendant ran a stop sign and caused an accident. He claimed that he was not high, that the last time he had smoked had been two or three days prior to the accident. However, as a habitual smoker, his BAC of THC was enough to make him “legally” high, even though he was sober at the time of the crash. Or, as the site puts it: “In any event, prosecutors claim, the high level of THC in [defendant] Foiles’ urine is proof that Foiles was a chronic abuser of marijuana and such chronic use itself rendered Foiles incapable of driving safely.”
In the end, he was sentanced to six years.
L.L. Cool J was just doing one of his rap numbers in the Raiders-Titans halftime show.
Near the end of the song, completely out of nowhere, he blurted out, “Don’t do drugs.” :rolleyes:
That reminds me of 3/4 of cartoons from the eighties. At the end of the show, they would bring the characters back on for a one-two minute sketch about the importance of wearing helmets or not doing drugs. The writing was always completely off-base from the overall style of the cartoon.
—Have you ever been to a party like that? The doorbell keeps ringing because either A the neighbors are complaining about the noise B more people are showing up for the party or C people are showing up to buy weed.—
Oh sure: these commercial guys definately did some hardcore party research before filming this ad…
Thematically, it’s the exact same doorbell, at the exact same time in the scene (when the girl flops down on the couch). This isn’t a documentary: it’s a thematic effect. It’s the same scene, over and over. WHY? I agree with you: I don’t get it.
—Near the end of the song, completely out of nowhere, he blurted out, “Don’t do drugs.”—
A RAP star? Spouting a non-sequitur in the middle/end of a song? Impossible!
—Driving while high is just a bad idea.—
To be fair, one case in which it was dubious that the guy was high does not prove that it’s a bad idea. For all we know, he wouldn’t have run it if he WAS high. Sober people crash all the time: and run stop signs (my favorite real life excuse from a drunk driver: “The Stop sign turned red too fast for me to stop”)
I will admit the possibility it is meant to be the same scene over and over again. But for me that just doesn’t add up, like I said not just the doorbell and the differences in how messed up the girl is, but also the sounds of the party in the background. Overall it just implies to me “snapshots of a party over the evening”
[Itchy hits Scratchy over the head with a mallet]
Scratchy: Ow.
Itchy: Ha ha!
[Itchy hits Scratchy over the head with a mallet]
Scratchy: Ow.
Itchy: Ha ha!
[Itchy hits Scratchy over the head with a mallet]
Scratchy: Ow.
Itchy: Ha ha!
I think it does. The recklessness of his driving is not the point. Look at the *results. * Basically, the guy went to prison because of the high THC content in his urine. If you’ve smoked and are in an accident, your ass is toast, as far as the law is concerned. You are just as legally “intoxicated” as if you had drank a six-pack.
You may be eligible for the Safest Driver in America Award while baked, but if an accident occurs (which, as you say, can easily happen to completely sober people,) you’re in a world of trouble. The assumption will be that your pot use contributed to the accident, even if you insist that it did not. I watched this trial on TV. The kid had great expert witnesses, but that didn’t matter to the jury, and the jury is all that matters. They saw a pot fiend plowing into a car of innocent kids, and treated him just as they would have a drunk driver.
Look at it in the same light as drinking and driving. Some heavy drinkers may be able to drink six mixed drinks and not feel a thing, but despite the lack of effects, are legally drunk if they get behind the wheel.
For casual smokers, it would most likely just show up if you were high at the time. Habitual smokers are screwed, apparently.
MILLER!!
just WHAT is so uncool about volvos and whist with granny?
now, down to business.
i don’t take drugs anymore; however, i think that one should be free to do it without fear of government reprisals.
i suspect that studies showing that people who are high aren’t any worse drivers are seriously flawed. altered states and all of that, you know.
but, to the commercials.
‘i helped kill a judge today’…boy, that makes me weep! about as much as ‘i helped kill an irs agent today’.
the whole genre of the ‘talk to your kids’ commercials. yeah, right, parents never try that, do they? they just needed a commercial to tell them that…now, the kids will be drug-free for life.
Heh. I remember that primarily from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and also (in a slightly less dorky form) from G.I. Joe. ("… and knowing is half the battle!")
Of course, there were cartoons in the 1970s that did this, too. The first season of the Zan-and-Jayna episodes of The Super Friends frequently had little segments with Batman & Robin eating healthy snacks, Superman coming across a little girl who burned herself a little and telling her to put the burn in very cold water, etc…
“Cartoon All-Stars to the Aescue”
http://www.x-entertainment.com/articles/0712/top.gif
A passage:
“The show kicks off with a special message from then-president George Bush and some kind of albino circus bear they’ve managed to fit into a cobalt blue evening gown.”
I know it’s wrong, but I couldn’t resist laughing my ass off at that.
I am a peice of shit.
Best line" from Bill Hicks
If you’re against drugs…take all your albums and cd’s and take em out into the back yard…and burn em. Because I guarantee…those artists…we’re reaaaaaal f*cking high…"
For example…the beatles were sooo high they actually let Ringo sing…“We all live in a yellow submarine…”
another random quote:
“Rock Against Drugs!..<isn’t that like Christians against Christ?!?>”
Just a thought…