{"id":3943,"date":"2024-04-16T17:25:09","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T07:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/legal-marijuana-is-making-roads-deadlier-2\/"},"modified":"2024-04-16T17:25:09","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T07:25:09","slug":"legal-marijuana-is-making-roads-deadlier-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/legal-marijuana-is-making-roads-deadlier-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Legal Marijuana Is Making Roads Deadlier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As pot usage surges, sensible regulation is lagging behind<\/p>\n<p>Cannabis-related traffic fatalities are a threat to public safety. Governments need to get serious.<\/p>\n<p>Marijuana legalization is killing a lot of people. Not slowly \u2014 though some&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/heavy-teen-marijuana-use-may-cut-life-short-by-60\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">studies<\/a>&nbsp;suggest that it may be doing that, too \u2014 but quickly, in car crashes. It\u2019s one more symptom of the disastrous rush by lawmakers to capitalize on cannabis sales without doing the hard work needed to keep the public safe.<br \/>In Canada, which legalized recreational marijuana in 2018, one&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jamanetworkopen\/fullarticle\/2808961\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">study<\/a>&nbsp;found a 475% increase in emergency-room visits for cannabis-related crashes in Ontario between 2010 and 2021. Many more cases likely went undetected, owing to a dearth of reliable testing for driving while high.<br \/>In the US, the proportion of motor-vehicle fatalities involving cannabis use&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC8630490\/#:~:text=However%2C%20the%20percentage%20of%20crashes,from%204.8%25%20to%2010.3%25.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">soared<\/a>&nbsp;to 21.5% in 2018, up from 9% in 2000. One analysis found a 10%&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/publichealth.uic.edu\/news-stories\/legal-cannabis-markets-linked-to-increased-motor-vehicle-deaths\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">increase<\/a>&nbsp;in vehicular deaths, on average, following legalization by states. In California, the increase was 14%; in Oregon, it was 22%.<br \/>This suggests that more than 1,000 Americans could be dying annually because of marijuana-related accidents \u2014 and that\u2019s just in states where legalization has occurred. Given the ease of transporting the drug across state lines, the real number could be far higher.<\/p>\n<p>The cause of these deaths isn\u2019t just the drug itself. It\u2019s ignorance.&nbsp;A recent&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/health\/wellness\/pot-weed-marijuana-drive-when-safe-8dc8d2e7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">study<\/a>&nbsp;found that about half of marijuana users thought they were OK to drive 90 minutes after inhaling or ingesting the drug, yet their driving performance in a simulated vehicle was as bad as it had been after 30 minutes. The best available evidence suggests that people should wait a minimum of four hours before getting behind the wheel; some experts&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/202\/Fischer.Article.FULL_.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recommend eight to 12 hours<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/opinion\/articles\/2024-04-04\/marijuana-legalization-has-made-us-roads-more-lethal?leadSource=uverify%20wall\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" class=\"button\">For More<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As pot usage surges, sensible regulation is lagging behind Cannabis-related traffic fatalities are a threat to public safety. Governments need to get serious. Marijuana legalization is killing a lot of people. Not slowly \u2014 though some&nbsp;studies&nbsp;suggest that it may be doing that, too \u2014 but quickly, in car crashes. It\u2019s one more symptom of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people-against-drink-driving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}