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"Pro tip: there is also a difference between having a beer with dinner and chugging vodka shots all night long. :D" True, which points to the fact that it woul

"Pro tip: there is also a difference between having a beer with dinner and chugging vodka shots all night long. :D" True, which points to the fact that it would be useful to have a well-understood BAC-like scale for marijuana usage, especially as the drug becomes more and more legal to use. Clearly there's a difference between having one beer and driving an hour later compared to getting behind the wheel while nearly passed-out drunk. Lots of people have a decent approximate sense of what 0.08 BAC is when it comes to alcohol consumption, but everyone who is "high" is just "high" without some sort of well-defined scale.

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oxide 10y ago
tolerance comes into account, which is why comparing driving on marijuana and driving on alcohol is akin to comparing apples and oranges. they're entirely, exponentially, infinitely different.
- pklausler 10y ago
  As a mathematician, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you on "exponentially" and "infinitely" there.
  - oxide 10y ago
    it's hyperbole, not science. fair enough, though.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  I'm going to disagree here too. I've never been much of an alcohol drinker. I've probably had six standard drinks in the past year. If I drank a six pack of beer right now I'd probably pass out, while some of the people I work with would still be able to drive quite well. Something roughly equivalent applies to marijuana.
  - oxide 10y ago
    if you smoked a joint (or 6 joints, whatever) with no tolerance you'd probably just want to eat a twinky and have a nap instead of driving. even if you didn't, your motor control wouldn't be nearly as impaired, nor would your mental faculty. your judgement also wouldn't be as impaired as having a 6 pack of beer with no tolerance, making it even less likely you get behind the wheel while too intoxicated. I'd call that a "false" equivalence, not a rough one.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      Fair points, and I agree with the impaired judgement thing too, and you're right it is a false equivalence. I'll be honest... What I meant to say was, talking from experience: when I smoke six bongs of straight or strong mix, there's no way I should drive a car. Mostly because I'm too busy laughing or sleeping. Whereas last time I drank half a bottle of spirits I woke in a strange bed and could see my car out the window and had no recollection of how it got there. Alcohol is one hell of a drug.
chimeracoder 10y ago
> a well-understood BAC-like scale for marijuana usage, especially as the drug becomes more and more legal to use. That'd be tough. BAC is a meaningful metric because alcohol crosses the blood-brain barrier very easily. So, the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream is a very good predictor of the amount of alcohol acting on the brain. THC, on the other hand, does not cross the blood-brain barrier so readily. So the problem isn't that we can't measure the amount of THC in the blood; it's that it doesn't actually tell us anything meaningful[0]. > Lots of people have a decent approximate sense of what 0.08 BAC is when it comes to alcohol consumption, but everyone who is "high" is just "high" without some sort of well-defined scale. I actually don't think it's true that most people have an approximate sense of what .08 is. I think that most people believe they do, but most people actually have a very flawed misunderstanding of what .08 means (and doesn't mean). You can test this out yourself! If you want to be the life of the party, buy a portable breathalyzer for about $100. When you go out, ask your friends to guess what their own BAC is (and what their friends' BAC are, based on how drunk they're acting). I bet you you'll find really large disparities between the numbers. People just aren't very good at gauging how drunk they are (or how drunk their friends are). Or, alternatively, BAC just isn't a very good measure of impairment - you can interpret this either way. [0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12404577 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12404577
gohrt 10y ago
Unless you can easily estimate your BAC yourself, it's not useful.

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oxide 10y ago

tolerance comes into account, which is why comparing driving on marijuana and driving on alcohol is akin to comparing apples and oranges. they're entirely, exponentially, infinitely different.

pklausler 10y ago
As a mathematician, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you on "exponentially" and "infinitely" there.
- oxide 10y ago
  it's hyperbole, not science. fair enough, though.
TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
I'm going to disagree here too. I've never been much of an alcohol drinker. I've probably had six standard drinks in the past year. If I drank a six pack of beer right now I'd probably pass out, while some of the people I work with would still be able to drive quite well. Something roughly equivalent applies to marijuana.
- oxide 10y ago
  if you smoked a joint (or 6 joints, whatever) with no tolerance you'd probably just want to eat a twinky and have a nap instead of driving. even if you didn't, your motor control wouldn't be nearly as impaired, nor would your mental faculty. your judgement also wouldn't be as impaired as having a 6 pack of beer with no tolerance, making it even less likely you get behind the wheel while too intoxicated. I'd call that a "false" equivalence, not a rough one.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    Fair points, and I agree with the impaired judgement thing too, and you're right it is a false equivalence. I'll be honest... What I meant to say was, talking from experience: when I smoke six bongs of straight or strong mix, there's no way I should drive a car. Mostly because I'm too busy laughing or sleeping. Whereas last time I drank half a bottle of spirits I woke in a strange bed and could see my car out the window and had no recollection of how it got there. Alcohol is one hell of a drug.

chimeracoder 10y ago

> a well-understood BAC-like scale for marijuana usage, especially as the drug becomes more and more legal to use. That'd be tough. BAC is a meaningful metric because alcohol crosses the blood-brain barrier very easily. So, the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream is a very good predictor of the amount of alcohol acting on the brain. THC, on the other hand, does not cross the blood-brain barrier so readily. So the problem isn't that we can't measure the amount of THC in the blood; it's that it doesn't actually tell us anything meaningful[0]. > Lots of people have a decent approximate sense of what 0.08 BAC is when it comes to alcohol consumption, but everyone who is "high" is just "high" without some sort of well-defined scale. I actually don't think it's true that most people have an approximate sense of what .08 is. I think that most people believe they do, but most people actually have a very flawed misunderstanding of what .08 means (and doesn't mean). You can test this out yourself! If you want to be the life of the party, buy a portable breathalyzer for about $100. When you go out, ask your friends to guess what their own BAC is (and what their friends' BAC are, based on how drunk they're acting). I bet you you'll find really large disparities between the numbers. People just aren't very good at gauging how drunk they are (or how drunk their friends are). Or, alternatively, BAC just isn't a very good measure of impairment - you can interpret this either way. [0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12404577 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12404577

gohrt 10y ago

Unless you can easily estimate your BAC yourself, it's not useful.