Injury In Idaho

Fatal Car Crashes Involving Pot use have Tripled in U.S.

At the same time that some states are moving toward marijuana legalization, a recent study reveals that fatal car crashes involving marijuana have tripled during the previous decade.

“Currently, one of nine drivers involved in fatal crashes would test positive for marijuana,” said Dr. Guohua Li, director of the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at Columbia. “If this trend continues, in five or six years non-alcohol drugs will overtake alcohol to become the most common substance involved in deaths related to impaired driving.”

Alcohol contributed to about the same percentage of traffic fatalities throughout the decade, about 40 percent, but drugged driving accounted for more than 28 percent of traffic deaths in 2010, up from more than 16 percent in 1999.

In the study, conducted by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, the combined use of alcohol and marijuana dramatically increases a driver’s risk of death.

The study also reported that the increase in marijuana use occurred across all age groups and in both sexes. Marijuana impairs driving in much the same way that alcohol does.  It impairs judgment, affects vision and makes a person more distractible and more likely to take risks while driving.

Complicating the hazard posed by drugged driving is the fact that police also do yet not have a test as accurate and convenient as the breathalyzer for checking a driver’s marijuana intoxication during a traffic stop.  Another problem is that marijuana’s main psychoactive ingredient, THC, can linger in the body long after the initial high.

Another complication is marijuana’s main psychoactive ingredient, THC. It can linger in the body long after the initial high.  The most reliable test for THC is a blood test. A few states, like Washington and Colorado, have even established a kind of legal limit of marijuana in the blood: 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter.

But performing that test often requires that police drive a suspect to a hospital. And it’s tough to interpret exactly what those tests mean for driving ability.

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