Jeff Brubacher from Vancouver General Hospital published “Cannabis use as a risk factor for causing motor vehicle crashes: a prospective study.” The study has earned a great deal of press due to his finding that there was no increased risk of crash responsibility in the driver pool he studied for drivers with a blood THC level between 2 and 5 ng/ml. There was an increased risk of crash responsibility for drivers over 5 ng/ml, but … READ MORE
Twelve Drugged-Driving Lessons from Colorado
What has marijuana legalization done to Driving Under the Influence (DUI) cases in Colorado? Important answers are now emerging. July 2018, the Division of Criminal Justice (DCJ) released a 106-page report Driving Under the Influence of Drugs and Alcohol for the year 2016. This first-of-its-kind report and its database enabled us to draw twelve important conclusions.
1 Colorado’s report is the first to show causes of DUI, not just presence of drugs
Coroners … READ MORE
Misleading the public – again
“Pot comments fire anxiety,” screamed a 5 column first page headline in the March 4th edition of The Denver Post, long known for its pro-pot reporting. This story was no exception, reporting on the potential effects of enforcing federal drug laws.
Although the story was purporting to be on the comments from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Press Secretary Sean Spicer that cause anxiety in the cannabis industry, nearly all of the comments quoted … READ MORE
More bad journalism
Jacob Sullum, a pro-pot writer for Reason and Fortune magazines, is at it again.
This time, he claims that marijuana’s impact on crash risk has been greatly exaggerated, based upon Rogeberg and Elvik’s (R&E) paper, soon to be published in the journal Addiction. Sullum, in his typical snarky style, writes that there’s not much evidence of a surge in traffic fatalities due to marijuana-impairment in Colorado or Washington. This shouldn’t be a surprise, … READ MORE
Tilting at windmills is also futile
Two recent research reports explain why blood tests are ineffective for determining driving impairment by marijuana, and why impairment-based DUI per se blood level limits for marijuana are useless.
Rebecca Hartman’s team (R.L. Hartman et al. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2015.06.015 ) led the groundbreaking Iowa driving simulator study that showed, “During drive blood THC ≥8.2 ?g/L increased SDLP similar to notably-impairing alcohol concentrations.” She followed up with a report in Clinical Chemistry this year (R.L. Hartman et al. … READ MORE