Now that four states have legalized the recreational use of marijuana, new research suggests you’re more likely to be involved in a fatal car accident if you toke and drive.
This is the finding of a report released Tuesday by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. The foundation studied the frequency of of fatal car crashes in Washington after the state legalized marijuana four years ago. The results were stunning.
After legalization, the number of fatal accidents involving drivers who had just consumed marijuana doubled from eight percent to 17 percent, AAA researchers found. The rise occurred between 2013 and 2014.
For all fatal crashes in the state in 2014, one in six involved someone high on marijuana, the study found.
This AAA video shows a number of traffic stops where drivers are suspected of being high. In one, the driver tells the officer he hasn't been smoking marijuana, to which the officer responds, "Then why do I smell it?"
While marijuana isn't legal for recreational use in Georgia, the legislature passed a bill last year legalizing the use of medical marijuana to treat severe forms of eight illnesses including cancer, Parkinson's disease and epilepsy. The medicinal form, however, is oil based.
THC is the main chemical component in marijuana that gives a person the feeling of being high and can impair his or her ability to drive. According to AAA, some states that legalized recreational marijuana also established legal driving limits on the maximum amount of THC that can be in a person’s blood. The so called ‘per se’ limits can be used to figure out how recently a person consumed marijuana before getting behind the wheel.
But the limits are arbitrary, AAA researchers argued, and should be reconsidered after more serious research is done on the affects of THC in the blood stream. Among the foundation’s findings:
• Drivers don’t consistently become impaired at a specific level of marijuana in the blood. Depending on the person, drivers with low THC blood levels may be unsafe behind the wheel, while others with relatively high levels might be fine.
• High THC levels might drop below legal thresholds before a test is given to a driver suspected of being high.
• Frequent marijuana users can have persistent levels of the drug long after use, while drug levels can decline more rapidly among occasional users. This makes developing safe, legal, consistent driving guidelines difficult.
“Given the findings of this new research, our advice is that nobody should drive after recent marijuana use, and law enforcement should have a fair and educated approach for dealing with those who do,” said Kevin Bakewell, Senior Vice President and Chief Public Affairs Officer for AAA.
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