Driving

Non-Medical marijuana science & studies.

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Driving

Postby palmspringsbum » Fri Apr 14, 2006 1:47 pm

The Drug War Chronicle wrote:Drugged Driving: British Study Finds One-Third of Drivers Who Test Positive for Drugs Pass Roadside Impairment Tests 4/14/06

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/431/driving2.shtml

<img src=bin/driving.jpg align=right>A study released April 3 by the British Department for Transportation found that one-third of drivers who tested positive for illegal drugs drove well enough to pass roadside impairment tests. The study found that well-trained police doing Field Impairment Tests (FITS) -- where officers ask drivers to walk in a straight line, touch their fingers to their noses, and similar tasks -- were unable to detect any noticeable impairment in those drivers.

The FITS do not test for the presence of a specific substance in the body. Instead, they test a driver's ability to carry out tasks involving balance, judgment, and ability to follow complex instructions -- precisely the abilities needed to safely operate an automobile. Drug tests do not measure impairment, but the presence of a drug or its metabolites in the body.

The Association of Chief Police Officers in the United Kingdom has called for new laws that would make a positive drug test the only evidence needed to support a conviction for drugged driving, a position similar to that of the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is pushing for drugged driving bills in states across the country. Proponents of such measures liken them to laws against drug drinking, where drivers are presumed to be impaired above a certain blood alcohol level. But unlike the drunk driving laws, drugged driving laws set that limit at zero.

The British police chiefs have the backing of the RAC Foundation, the charitable offshoot of the Royal Automobile Club, a rough British equivalent to the American Auto Association. In a Monday press release, the foundation said it "supports ACPO's suggestion that a positive road-side drug test should be the only evidence needed to take these drivers off the road."

Oddly for an organization that proclaims it is about "protecting the interest of the motorist," the foundation complained that police had to actually show someone was impaired to arrest him for driving while impaired. "The fight against drug-driving is also made more difficult by the need to prove not just that the driver has taken drugs but also that their driving is impaired as a result," the foundation said.


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Postby rsteeb » Mon May 01, 2006 9:31 pm

Thanks Goddess CA rejected the "detectable trace" threshold for cannabis DUI. :o

I haven't met that standard since the 60's, nor do I intend to.

I expect and intend to be free of the risk of false-positive test results for the rest of my life!

As to the difficulty for LEOs in discerning cannabis-using drivers in field-sobriety tests, just maybe that's because their faculties are NOT IMPAIRED!
"When TYRANNY is abroad, SUBMISSION is the crime."
--Rev. Andrew Eliot 29 May, 1765
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Driving and pot

Postby palmspringsbum » Sat Jul 08, 2006 10:21 am

The Edmonton Sun wrote: July 8, 2006

Driving and pot
By DOUG BEAZLEY, EDMONTON SUN

Here's what cops want you to remember: James McIlwrick was high on marijuana and prescription drugs the morning he slammed a pickup truck into another vehicle two years ago, killing Tammy Engelking and Henry Yao.

Here's what they'd rather you forget: your chances of being caught driving under the influence of pot are slim to none.

Unless you get into a serious accident - or confess to a police officer in a moment of stoned candour - you're probably going to get away with it.

And there are probably a lot more stoned drivers on the highways than anyone cares to admit. McIlwrick's case was an odd one: having caused the crash outside Sherwood Park that killed Engelking and Yao, he freely admitted to emergency medical staff and police at the scene he'd smoked a joint earlier in the day.

He also copped to consuming the drugs Ativan, Zyprexia and Zithromax, which contributed to his drowsy state.

"It's a rare case," said Crown prosecutor Greg Marchant. "I've been doing this work for five years, and I can only remember one drug-impairment case involving (marijuana)."

Can you test a driver for marijuana impairment? Not without his permission - or a court order. Because alcohol distributes evenly throughout the body, a breath test actually gives a very near estimate of how much booze made it to the brain.

Police officers can also force you to take a roadside breath test on suspicion, or as part of a random checkstop.

Cannabis is complicated. The active ingredient in weed, for instance, collects in fatty tissues. Breath samples are useless. Even blood samples aren't completely reliable - and they're not much good from a legal point of view.

"Police have no legal right to compel a blood test, even if they suspect impairment," said local criminal lawyer Robert Shaigec. "A blood sample is considered intrusive under the law. A breath sample isn't."

Let's settle something right now: marijuana does impair your ability to drive safely. I know I'm going to get a lot of e-mails from lifetime weed smokers claiming the stuff makes them better drivers.

Not true. Wise up.

"It impairs visual function, your ability to follow moving objects," said Doug Beirness, senior research associate with the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.

"Drivers under the influence of marijuana tend to show slower reaction times, an inability to respond adequately to unexpected events. They're easily startled, and they have trouble deciding what to do in an emergency situation."

Marijuana has one effect it doesn't share with alcohol: people high on weed tend to be very aware of their impaired state. So while drunks drive recklessly, a driver high on cannabis will more often drive slightly below the speed limit and leave larger gaps between his car and other traffic.

But he's still impaired - when something goes wrong, studies show the stoned driver is at a higher risk of being responsible for a collision. His diminished reflexes make him an unsafe driver, even if he's driving under the posted limit. And when cannabis is combined with booze, the likelihood of an accident increases again.

But because a lot of people think driving stoned is safe, a lot of people are doing it. A recent study found roughly 2% of Ontarians reported driving under the influence of cannabis in the previous year. Among regular users, that percentage jumped to 23%.

There's no legal limit for cannabis impairment in the Criminal Code, because there's no practical way to test for it. A British company has a patent on a device that tests saliva for marijuana's active ingredient, and Australian cops are using it. But it's not cleared for Canadian courts.

In the meantime, police have something called the Drug Recognition Expertise protocol. Crafted by the RCMP, its a checklist of signs and symptoms used by cops to detect impairment by all sorts of drugs, weed included. There are five DRE-trained officers in Alberta now, and another 24 should be trained by the end of November.

"But again, we can't compel a driver to submit to a DRE test," said RCMP Cpl. Evan Graham, national DRE co-ordinator. "There was a bill before Parliament that would have given us that power, but it died with the election."

"Basically, police are left with their own observations as evidence. Was the driver slurring his speech, was he weaving in the lane?" said Beirness.

"But in the absence of medical evidence of impairment, that's probably not going to be enough for a conviction. Any lawyer could get the charge tossed in about two minutes."

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Drugs factor in car crashes, study finds

Postby palmspringsbum » Tue Dec 12, 2006 3:39 pm

The study, released as part of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, said it’s impossible to determine how often drugs are involved with fatal crashes nationally, because of a lack of data.

But in West Virginia, the regular testing has enabled the CDC to determine that drugs are found in 25.8 percent of people killed in wrecks. That’s similar to the percentage of victims found with a blood alcohol level above the legal limit — about 27.7 percent...

The drugs found most often by the medical examiners were prescription medications, usually opioid painkillers like hydrocodone and oxycodone or depressants. The illicit drug most commonly found was marijuana, present in 8.5 percent of all victims.



The Charleston Gazette wrote:December 08, 2006

Drugs factor in car crashes, study finds

The Charleston Gazette
By The Associated Press


The focus on the dangers of drinking and driving may have overshadowed a similarly serious problem: the effect of drugs, including prescription medication, on drivers.

According to a federal study released Thursday, West Virginia medical examiners have found that drugs turn up almost as frequently as alcohol in the victims of fatal car crashes. The drugs found most often are prescription medications like painkillers and depressants.

The federal Centers for Disease Control is able to draw that conclusion because West Virginia — unlike most states — routinely tests the victims of fatal crashes for drugs and prescription medications as well as alcohol.

“We have very thorough and efficient medical examiners,” said John Law, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Human Resources. “Doing this has provided us with information on what besides alcohol may be contributing to these accidents. A lot of states don’t have that.”

The study, released as part of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, said it’s impossible to determine how often drugs are involved with fatal crashes nationally, because of a lack of data.

But in West Virginia, the regular testing has enabled the CDC to determine that drugs are found in 25.8 percent of people killed in wrecks. That’s similar to the percentage of victims found with a blood alcohol level above the legal limit — about 27.7 percent.

“These results suggest that drug use contributes substantially to driver impairment in West Virginia,” the report says.

The report studied results from 2004 and 2005, when 784 people died in car crashes in the state. Drug and alcohol tests were performed on roughly 84 percent of those killed. Nearly half the people killed had either alcohol or drugs in their system; 11 percent had both.

“I’m not surprised at all,” said Jim Helmkamp, director of West Virginia University’s Injury Control Research Center and professor in the Department of Community Medicine.

Helmkamp said results like these indicate the need to educate the public about the dangers of drugs — including prescription medications — and driving, similar to efforts warning against drunken driving.

The drugs found most often by the medical examiners were prescription medications, usually opioid painkillers like hydrocodone and oxycodone or depressants. The illicit drug most commonly found was marijuana, present in 8.5 percent of all victims.

Those results differ from previous studies that hadn’t shown prescription medications appearing so frequently in crash deaths, said Dr. Len Paulozzi, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC Injury Center. Local factors — such as the prevalence of prescription painkillers in West Virginia — could be part of the cause for that.

“It’s a stretch to say we can extrapolate these results for the rest of the country,” Paulozzi said.

There also isn’t enough data to determine how many people with prescription medications in their system had legally obtained them, Paulozzi said.

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A little pot + a little booze = big risks

Postby palmspringsbum » Mon Jan 07, 2008 7:36 pm

The Jerusalem Post wrote:A little pot + a little booze = big risks

Judy Siegel-Itzkovich , THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 6, 2008

<hr class=postrule>

Driving after drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, even in low amounts, is very dangerous, according to new research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba. The combination minimizes the ability to navigate a straight path in the middle of a lane and observe speed limits, says Prof. David Shinar, head of the university's engineering lab in charge of studying human factors in road accidents, with Dr. Adi Ronen.

The researchers, who conducted their study for the Israel Anti-Drugs Authority, said that being under the influence of alcohol and other drugs is one of the main causes of road accidents. The problem is serious even in those who use the drugs in small doses. The active substance in marijuana combines with alcohol to have this magnified effect.

The study included 12 social users of marijuana (seven men and five women aged 24 to 29) who took part in five sessions. A control group smoked cigarettes and drank juice without alcohol. Others drank alcohol and smoked tobacco, while the study group smoked marijuana and drank alcohol. They were tested cognitively 24 hours later.

The volunteer subjects were asked to drive a car using a computerized simulator with straight and crooked sections that were level and descended and under foggy conditions. Before and after driving, they were asked to solve two-digit addition and subtraction problems. Even a low dose of THC plus alcohol affected their driving abilities and math skills.

The researchers noted that most people who combine alcohol and "pot" do so at night, making driving even more dangerous. Further research will compare the effects of this "cocktail" on women and men.
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Some News Articles

Postby palmspringsbum » Sat Apr 11, 2009 1:20 pm

<span class=postbold>See:</span>
  • Medical Marijuana Advocates Force Change to California DMV Policy
    Americans For Safe Access - 3 Mar 09 wrote:The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) issued a new policy yesterday with regard to how it treats qualified medical marijuana patients. The DMV Driver Safety Procedure Manual was revised to include reference to medical marijuana, stating that "use of medicinal marijuana approved by a physician should be handled in the same manner as any other prescription medication which may affect safe driving." The manual states that the existence of medical marijuana use "does not, in itself, constitute grounds for a license withdrawal action."

  • California DMV: Licenses can't be revoked over medical marijuana
    The San Jose Mercury News - 4 Mar 9 wrote:A revised Department of Motor Vehicles' training memo instructs agency staff to treat medical marijuana like any other prescription drug when considering whether to renew a driver's license.

  • Driving under the influence in Oregon includes marijuana
    The Mail Tribune - 6 Apr 09 wrote:If an officer pulls someone over and determines they may be driving impaired due to marijuana, then the officer would treat the driver just the same as if the driver was impaired by alcohol. They'd be requested to perform field sobriety tests and if they failed the tests then they'd be arrested. They'd be taken to a location where an intoxilyzer was available and be given a chance to give a breath sample. Assuming nothing else is in their system, then the result of the breath sample would be .00 percent, at which point the officer would ask for a urine sample, to send to the crime lab for drug analysis, and call in a drug recognition expert to do additional evaluation on the driver. From that point the rest of the case finishes just like the case of a person who is impaired by alcohol.

  • Five new CHP officers headed to Qunicy area
    The Plumas County News - 8 Apr 09 wrote:He also said for the first quarter of last year 30 percent of DUI crashes were from prescription medications. The commander said these two statistics caused the CHP to alter its shifts and how it did business, moving some of its priorities from late at night and early in the morning to peak hours and paying greater attention to its drug recognition program.

    ...Davis told the board many of the arrests have been for people with medical marijuana prescriptions who think that means they can drive while using.

    He went on to say that, despite this fact, most of the arrests were from prescription medications.

    Davis said that in general these were not honest mistake cases, but situations where people abused prescription drugs or knowingly drove under the influence of them, against warning labels and doctors’ orders. He also said about 50 percent of those arrests came from calls from someone who knew the driver or witnessed the driver acting strangely.
Where it all comes together...
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