8 ms·

Colorado resident here. Everyone in law enforcement loves to talk about stoned driving, it's their wedge issue to get this over-turned. My issue with that logic

Colorado resident here. Everyone in law enforcement loves to talk about stoned driving, it's their wedge issue to get this over-turned. My issue with that logic is that people smoked before it was legal too. In fact I'd guess that other than out of state tourists the rate of people using marijuana hasn't changed much more than 2-3%. So driving stoned was illegal before, it's illegal now. Nothing has changed other than law enforcement feels like their federal drug boondoggle funds are drying up.

bryanlarsen 11y ago
Here in Canada where the government has promised to legalize marijuana, the canard is underage usage. Quite regularly you see newspaper articles about studies on the effects of marijuana smoking on teenage brains. I suspect that Canada will prohibit edibles for this reason.
- mfoy_ 11y ago
  With even the same parallels that consuming marijuana while underage was illegal before and will be illegal after. You may as well publish articles about the effects of alcohol on underage brains (which is actually quite detrimental) as an argument for prohibition.
  - massysett 11y ago
    So what's the logic here? One dangerous substance is legal, so we might as well legalize additional dangerous substances?
    - CocaKoala 11y ago
      Can you establish that marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol? If so, I'd be very interested to see your sources and metrics. If not, I'd be very interested to see a justification for why marijuana should remain illegal.
      - massysett 11y ago
        No, I cannot. But so what? Are you saying it is harmless? I don't care if it is merely less dangerous than alcohol.
        CocaKoala 11y ago
        I did not, and am not, saying that it's harmless. That would be ridiculous. But if it's less harmful than alcohol, a substance which is legal for consumption and moderated by the government, why should it be illegal? What's your justification for saying marijuana should be banned for reasons of harm, when you can't establish that it's more harmful than more easily available alternatives? Or are you also arguing that alcohol should be banned, as well? Edit: To answer your initial question, the logic here is "One harmful substance is legal, thus other substances which are less harmful should probably also be legal".
    - Cerium 11y ago
      The logic here is that studies about the effects of a substance on youth has no merits in a discussion about the legality of adult use. Studies about the effects on adults would be more relevant.
      - massysett 11y ago
        The legality of adult use makes these substances more readily available to children, so their health effects on children are relevant.
        Symbiote 11y ago
        But it's the illegal one that's easier for children to buy. Drug dealers are already breaking the law, they don't care if the customer is 14.
- randomgyatwork 11y ago
  I'm also Canadian, a high school teacher told me a whole bunch of students got suspended for selling weed brownies at school. He also said a girl got suspend for being drunk around the same time. The law hardly matter in these cases, people do what they will do. If edibles are illegal kids will just make them at home.
- SpaceCadetJones 11y ago
  I don't have any on hand, but I'm pretty there's been surveys showing teenagers in the US admit it's easier to get cannabis than alcohol. I know that was 100% true when I was in high school. All it took was a phone call to 1 of 10 possible sources who would then deliver it to your doorstep. Getting alcohol meant trying to find someone with an older friend or sibling willing to go out of their way, or driving to the sketchy part of the town next door and hoping that one liquor store would sell to you.
  - Thirdegree 11y ago
    Still 100% true. I turned 20 earlier this month, it has always been easier to get cannabis than alcohol for me.
- fred_is_fred 11y ago
  Once you make the conclusion that whether or not it's legal has no effect on whether people will use it, then everything else falls out from there. It's easier for kids to get illegal pot than legal and that will always be the case.
mikeash 11y ago
Drunk driving causes 10,000 deaths each year in the US, so let's outlaw alcohol. Because that went so well the last time.
- jasonkostempski 11y ago
  Driving causes over 30k.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Can we just nuke the entire argument in this thread about vehicle deaths and push self-driving cars as hard as possible? Pot. Alcohol. Texting. Talking on the phone. They all impair you terribly while driving. That does not require prohibition. That requires taking the human out of the loop for driving ~2.5 tons of metal down the highway.
    - kefka 11y ago
      For starters, I heartily agree. Full stack vehicle automation will save a great deal of lives and property damage. And then we need to look at "What happens when we have 5 million people unemployed in a short time, due to rapid advancements in automation?" The Democrats aren't looking at this, and nor are the Republicans. Really, no party is looking at this. We have a few economists and scientific-y types talking about Mincome, but aside some experiments in Europe, it's being drowned out. What do we have that can absorb such a hit on our financial system and not drop in a recession? How do we make sure these people don't simply sink when the 'bots come to take their job?
      - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
        > How do we make sure these people don't simply sink when the 'bots come to take their job? They won't so much sink as they will just never float.
    - theklub 11y ago
      Sure lets hand the keys to a robot.
MadManE 11y ago
Everything about enforcing driving stoned has changed. The stuff stays in your system too long to have a convenient test like alcohol does. So now you effectively have no way to prove whether or not someone was breaking that law.
- aidenn0 11y ago
  I know it stays in fatty-tissue for a long time, but surely the fractional blood-content of THC is way higher 20 minutes after toking up than the next day?
  - MadManE 11y ago
    So what's the test for that? Are you ok with giving police the authority to draw blood on a whim? Basically, we either accept an invasive test, or we can't enforce the law. Which is 100% different than what it was before.
    - aidenn0 11y ago
      I don't know about Colorado, but in many jurisdictions, the appearance of being impaired, plus a negative breath-test is sufficient cause for a blood draw already.
      - sageikosa 11y ago
        So what does the appearance of being stoned really look like?
    - cdr 11y ago
      Police already have the authority to draw blood for alcohol-impaired driving. If you refuse, your driver's license is automatically suspended and the refusal can be used against you in court.
      - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
        It's a bad law, and not every state is the same on this particular issue.
Futurebot 11y ago
Sounds like there's room for innovation here. How about portable THC testers for drinks, foods, etc.?
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  How about an objective test for impairment, (motor skills and reaction time test)?
dikdik 11y ago
Hopefully some of the tax revenue is going into research on marijuana as well, if we hadn't basically banned research on this substance for so long we'd have more data. However, can't the officer give a field sobriety test if they suspect the citizen is high? What would they do if someone took too many xanax or went on a drive while on ambien? While I understand why a "highness-measuring" device would be nice, I think this underlies a sore point in our policing and governing. It's not enough for the officer to make a judgement on whether the citizen is too impaired to drive, we must have a quantitative measurement. I think both a subjective judgement and any one quantitative measurement can overlook a ton of factors, but one is better at negating legal repercussions.
- tekromancr 11y ago
  That's why I think we should look for some sort of acuity-based test. We need to devise some task that tests attention, reaction-time, etc and use that as a basis for whether you are too impaired to drive. It has the added benefit of also being applicable to tired-driving and medicated-driving (non-mmj medicated, think cold pills).
VLM 11y ago
Maybe a different technique of enforcement? In the state I live in: "No person may endanger the safety of any person or property by the negligent operation of a vehicle." If you're endangering people and property while dead sober, you get arrested anyway. Why does the content of their blood fundamentally matter? If someone is swerving around and kills me, why should I care if he was drunk, stoned, or just not paying attention? I'm just as dead. Its not like I'm any less dead if he was stoned or more dead if he was drunk. Remember its not 1930s era prohibition anymore. Plenty of video recorders, cheap. I'm willing to trade "arrest stoners who haven't crashed yet" for "also arrest dead sober idiots who can't drive" I'm just not seeing a problem. Other than the criminal justice system, who benefits by DUI laws? Clearly the general public isn't any safer because dangerous driving is already illegal via the negligence law.
- schoen 11y ago
  I guess the idea is that negligent driving isn't always obvious either to people watching or to people doing it, since most impaired drivers don't cause accidents on most of their trips (and many won't visibly weave back and forth). If some kinds of impairment significantly increase the risk of an accident but aren't easy to detect from behavior or from introspection, it might be a big benefit to safety to say that you can never drive a vehicle under those conditions. And I think the introspection part could be important alongside the enforcement part, again because the idea is that people might routinely be overconfident in their ability to drive safely after consuming intoxicants. So they don't necessarily think they're endangering others as much as they are. (That might be possible to measure empirically, and it might turn out that some existing laws are too strict under that rationale.) I remember a children's museum exhibit that was about reaction times, basically trying to justify to kids why they shouldn't drink and drive when they got older. The interesting issue that it highlighted was that fast reaction times can be very important for avoiding some kinds of accidents, and even a small impairment to your reaction time could increase risk a lot in a way that you might not anticipate. But I also remember that when I saw that exhibit, I thought "hmmmm, why don't driving tests test someone's baseline reaction time to make sure that everybody who's a licensed driver can actually react to stuff quickly?" and "hmmmm, why don't they make a toy that you could use to test your own level of impairment before driving, rather than only relying on estimating your blood alcohol content?". Edit: someone already suggested both of these ideas in another thread above!
Carrok 11y ago
Every time this is brought up people say "there is no effective way to test impairment". What ever happened to good old 'walk the line'. Road-side maneuvers are still used extensively with suspected DUIs, but the logic is that if you can perform the certain complex set of tasks they give you, you are fine to drive. How is this any different for weed, or anything else?
- roflchoppa 11y ago
  Not sure about other people but for myself, there is no physical impairments; stumbling, tilting, etc. That would be present when drinking alcohol. Can ski a black diamond while still being stoned.
  - roflchoppa 11y ago
    Yo so i posted this comment a couple hours ago. and fucking now i see youtube recommended videos for "driving while stoned news report" fucking cookies.

bryanlarsen 11y ago

Here in Canada where the government has promised to legalize marijuana, the canard is underage usage. Quite regularly you see newspaper articles about studies on the effects of marijuana smoking on teenage brains. I suspect that Canada will prohibit edibles for this reason.

mfoy_ 11y ago
With even the same parallels that consuming marijuana while underage was illegal before and will be illegal after. You may as well publish articles about the effects of alcohol on underage brains (which is actually quite detrimental) as an argument for prohibition.
- massysett 11y ago
  So what's the logic here? One dangerous substance is legal, so we might as well legalize additional dangerous substances?
  - CocaKoala 11y ago
    Can you establish that marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol? If so, I'd be very interested to see your sources and metrics. If not, I'd be very interested to see a justification for why marijuana should remain illegal.
    - massysett 11y ago
      No, I cannot. But so what? Are you saying it is harmless? I don't care if it is merely less dangerous than alcohol.
      - CocaKoala 11y ago
        I did not, and am not, saying that it's harmless. That would be ridiculous. But if it's less harmful than alcohol, a substance which is legal for consumption and moderated by the government, why should it be illegal? What's your justification for saying marijuana should be banned for reasons of harm, when you can't establish that it's more harmful than more easily available alternatives? Or are you also arguing that alcohol should be banned, as well? Edit: To answer your initial question, the logic here is "One harmful substance is legal, thus other substances which are less harmful should probably also be legal".
  - Cerium 11y ago
    The logic here is that studies about the effects of a substance on youth has no merits in a discussion about the legality of adult use. Studies about the effects on adults would be more relevant.
    - massysett 11y ago
      The legality of adult use makes these substances more readily available to children, so their health effects on children are relevant.
      - Symbiote 11y ago
        But it's the illegal one that's easier for children to buy. Drug dealers are already breaking the law, they don't care if the customer is 14.
randomgyatwork 11y ago
I'm also Canadian, a high school teacher told me a whole bunch of students got suspended for selling weed brownies at school. He also said a girl got suspend for being drunk around the same time. The law hardly matter in these cases, people do what they will do. If edibles are illegal kids will just make them at home.
SpaceCadetJones 11y ago
I don't have any on hand, but I'm pretty there's been surveys showing teenagers in the US admit it's easier to get cannabis than alcohol. I know that was 100% true when I was in high school. All it took was a phone call to 1 of 10 possible sources who would then deliver it to your doorstep. Getting alcohol meant trying to find someone with an older friend or sibling willing to go out of their way, or driving to the sketchy part of the town next door and hoping that one liquor store would sell to you.
- Thirdegree 11y ago
  Still 100% true. I turned 20 earlier this month, it has always been easier to get cannabis than alcohol for me.
fred_is_fred 11y ago
Once you make the conclusion that whether or not it's legal has no effect on whether people will use it, then everything else falls out from there. It's easier for kids to get illegal pot than legal and that will always be the case.

mikeash 11y ago

Drunk driving causes 10,000 deaths each year in the US, so let's outlaw alcohol. Because that went so well the last time.

jasonkostempski 11y ago
Driving causes over 30k.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Can we just nuke the entire argument in this thread about vehicle deaths and push self-driving cars as hard as possible? Pot. Alcohol. Texting. Talking on the phone. They all impair you terribly while driving. That does not require prohibition. That requires taking the human out of the loop for driving ~2.5 tons of metal down the highway.
  - kefka 11y ago
    For starters, I heartily agree. Full stack vehicle automation will save a great deal of lives and property damage. And then we need to look at "What happens when we have 5 million people unemployed in a short time, due to rapid advancements in automation?" The Democrats aren't looking at this, and nor are the Republicans. Really, no party is looking at this. We have a few economists and scientific-y types talking about Mincome, but aside some experiments in Europe, it's being drowned out. What do we have that can absorb such a hit on our financial system and not drop in a recession? How do we make sure these people don't simply sink when the 'bots come to take their job?
    - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
      > How do we make sure these people don't simply sink when the 'bots come to take their job? They won't so much sink as they will just never float.
  - theklub 11y ago
    Sure lets hand the keys to a robot.

MadManE 11y ago

Everything about enforcing driving stoned has changed. The stuff stays in your system too long to have a convenient test like alcohol does. So now you effectively have no way to prove whether or not someone was breaking that law.

aidenn0 11y ago
I know it stays in fatty-tissue for a long time, but surely the fractional blood-content of THC is way higher 20 minutes after toking up than the next day?
- MadManE 11y ago
  So what's the test for that? Are you ok with giving police the authority to draw blood on a whim? Basically, we either accept an invasive test, or we can't enforce the law. Which is 100% different than what it was before.
  - aidenn0 11y ago
    I don't know about Colorado, but in many jurisdictions, the appearance of being impaired, plus a negative breath-test is sufficient cause for a blood draw already.
    - sageikosa 11y ago
      So what does the appearance of being stoned really look like?
  - cdr 11y ago
    Police already have the authority to draw blood for alcohol-impaired driving. If you refuse, your driver's license is automatically suspended and the refusal can be used against you in court.
    - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
      It's a bad law, and not every state is the same on this particular issue.

Futurebot 11y ago

Sounds like there's room for innovation here. How about portable THC testers for drinks, foods, etc.?

fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
How about an objective test for impairment, (motor skills and reaction time test)?

dikdik 11y ago

Hopefully some of the tax revenue is going into research on marijuana as well, if we hadn't basically banned research on this substance for so long we'd have more data. However, can't the officer give a field sobriety test if they suspect the citizen is high? What would they do if someone took too many xanax or went on a drive while on ambien? While I understand why a "highness-measuring" device would be nice, I think this underlies a sore point in our policing and governing. It's not enough for the officer to make a judgement on whether the citizen is too impaired to drive, we must have a quantitative measurement. I think both a subjective judgement and any one quantitative measurement can overlook a ton of factors, but one is better at negating legal repercussions.

tekromancr 11y ago
That's why I think we should look for some sort of acuity-based test. We need to devise some task that tests attention, reaction-time, etc and use that as a basis for whether you are too impaired to drive. It has the added benefit of also being applicable to tired-driving and medicated-driving (non-mmj medicated, think cold pills).

VLM 11y ago

Maybe a different technique of enforcement? In the state I live in: "No person may endanger the safety of any person or property by the negligent operation of a vehicle." If you're endangering people and property while dead sober, you get arrested anyway. Why does the content of their blood fundamentally matter? If someone is swerving around and kills me, why should I care if he was drunk, stoned, or just not paying attention? I'm just as dead. Its not like I'm any less dead if he was stoned or more dead if he was drunk. Remember its not 1930s era prohibition anymore. Plenty of video recorders, cheap. I'm willing to trade "arrest stoners who haven't crashed yet" for "also arrest dead sober idiots who can't drive" I'm just not seeing a problem. Other than the criminal justice system, who benefits by DUI laws? Clearly the general public isn't any safer because dangerous driving is already illegal via the negligence law.

schoen 11y ago
I guess the idea is that negligent driving isn't always obvious either to people watching or to people doing it, since most impaired drivers don't cause accidents on most of their trips (and many won't visibly weave back and forth). If some kinds of impairment significantly increase the risk of an accident but aren't easy to detect from behavior or from introspection, it might be a big benefit to safety to say that you can never drive a vehicle under those conditions. And I think the introspection part could be important alongside the enforcement part, again because the idea is that people might routinely be overconfident in their ability to drive safely after consuming intoxicants. So they don't necessarily think they're endangering others as much as they are. (That might be possible to measure empirically, and it might turn out that some existing laws are too strict under that rationale.) I remember a children's museum exhibit that was about reaction times, basically trying to justify to kids why they shouldn't drink and drive when they got older. The interesting issue that it highlighted was that fast reaction times can be very important for avoiding some kinds of accidents, and even a small impairment to your reaction time could increase risk a lot in a way that you might not anticipate. But I also remember that when I saw that exhibit, I thought "hmmmm, why don't driving tests test someone's baseline reaction time to make sure that everybody who's a licensed driver can actually react to stuff quickly?" and "hmmmm, why don't they make a toy that you could use to test your own level of impairment before driving, rather than only relying on estimating your blood alcohol content?". Edit: someone already suggested both of these ideas in another thread above!

Carrok 11y ago

Every time this is brought up people say "there is no effective way to test impairment". What ever happened to good old 'walk the line'. Road-side maneuvers are still used extensively with suspected DUIs, but the logic is that if you can perform the certain complex set of tasks they give you, you are fine to drive. How is this any different for weed, or anything else?

roflchoppa 11y ago
Not sure about other people but for myself, there is no physical impairments; stumbling, tilting, etc. That would be present when drinking alcohol. Can ski a black diamond while still being stoned.
- roflchoppa 11y ago
  Yo so i posted this comment a couple hours ago. and fucking now i see youtube recommended videos for "driving while stoned news report" fucking cookies.