Why is marijuana illegal in United States?

[Dinner]

75% of the money Mexican drug cartels get comes from weed. Legalizing it would there for take away 3/4ths of their income and make them that much less powerful. That's good for both sides of the border especially since you'd see a whole lot less narco violence.

[regexcellent]

Legalizing pot won't have a huge influence on violent crime in our cities. A pot dealer typically doesn't drive around with a gat in his waistband, drive by shooting rivals on the street corner.

[Felch]

Just about every pot dealer I know has been robbed at gunpoint.

[MikeH]

Legalizing pot won't have a huge influence on violent crime in our cities. A pot dealer typically doesn't drive around with a gat in his waistband, drive by shooting rivals on the street corner.

Yeah, you need to legalize all drugs.

(and regulate, tax and control their sale like alcohol, tobacco etc.)

[Alexander's Horse]

[Dr Strangelove]

It's true. I have a friend who insists that he drives better high because when he is he's paranoid about the fuzz. He tells us his high driving is a public service. None of us will ride in a car when he is driving anymore.

Yeah, I used to have a relative who claimed the same thing about alcohol.

[Felch]

Slate's a pretty left-wing source, but they did have something to say on the matter:

Real world data from auto accidents indicate that a drunk driver is approximately 10 times more likely to cause a fatal accident than a stoned driver.

Of course, we should continue to base legislation on Dr Strangelove's intuition rather than any sort of statistical data. Science is witchcraft.

[MikeH]

The stat that matters is how likely they are to cause an accident compared to a sober person. Drink driving is so horrendously dangerous that being less dangerous than a drunk driver doesn't mean it's safe.

[giblets]

There's evidence that people drink less alcohol when marijuana is easier to get, so by legalizing pot you could be replacing a more dangerous form of driving with a less dangerous form.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w4662

[Alexander's Horse]

[Berzerker]

from Felch's article

A couple of studies even suggest that pot smokers are less likely to cause an accident than sober drivers.

It’s a little surprising that THC has such a small effect on driving. In experiments testing the skills required for driving—coordination, visual tracking, and reaction time—rather than driving itself, subjects under the influence of pot fare significantly worse than sober people. But when you put them behind the wheel of a driving simulator, tokers perform okay. Those who have taken in a moderate dose of the drug show minimal impairment, and very experienced smokers show almost no deficit at all. (Interestingly, habitual stoners are also better at driving drunk than ordinary people.)

I've driven well over a million miles, and much of it under the influence of booze and/or pot and I know from my experience pot aint a problem - if anything the pot makes it safer to drive DUI because it moderates the booze a bit... and I know from playing golf, I cant smoke enough to mess me up, but I sure can drink enough

[Dr Strangelove]

Slate's a pretty left-wing source, but they did have something to say on the matter:



Of course, we should continue to base legislation on Dr Strangelove's intuition rather than any sort of statistical data. Science is witchcraft.

I think that if you look at what the data really says is that drivers involved in fatal accidents are 10 times more likely to have a positive test for alcohol. In order to determine whether drunk drivers are more likely to have fatal accidents than stoned drivers you'd have to have equivalent testing for both substances not only of drivers involved in fatal accidents, but also of the total population of drivers so that you casn determine the fatal accident rate of both. While law enforcment officials do occassionally put up road checkpoints and test large groups of drivers for alcohol use, that really can't be done for marijuana users, because while breath testing for alcohol is relaible, the most reliable way of testing for marijuana use is the urine test. You can't put up a road checkpoint and make evey driver pee.

[Felch]

Well, I looked more closely at Slate's source, and it's an abstract of a meta-study. Some of those studies indicated that marijuana impaired drivers, and others did not. Among those that did not, there were some interesting observations, that I can verify through my own personal experience:

3.2.1 Studies that do not show impairment

Surprisingly, given the alarming results of cognitive studies, most marijuana-intoxicated drivers show only modest impairments on actual road tests. Experienced smokers who drive on a set course show almost no functional impairment under the influence of marijuana, except when it is combined with alcohol.

Many investigators have suggested that the reason why marijuana does not result in an increased crash rate in laboratory tests despite demonstrable neurophysiologic impairments is that, unlike drivers under the influence of alcohol, who tend to underestimate their degree of impairment, marijuana users tend to overestimate their impairment, and consequently employ compensatory strategies. Cannabis users perceive their driving under the influence as impaired and more cautious, and given a dose of 7 mg THC (about a third of a joint), drivers rated themselves as impaired even though their driving performance was not; in contrast, at a BAC 0.04% (slightly less than two “standard drinks” of a can of beer or small 5 oz. glass of wine; half the legal limit in most US states), driving performance was impaired even though drivers rated themselves as unimpaired. Binge drinkers are particularly likely to rate themselves as unimpaired, possibly because they tend to become less sedated by high doses of alcohol.

This awareness of impairment has behavioral consequences. Several reviews of driving and simulator studies have concluded that marijuana use by drivers is likely to result in decreased speed and fewer attempts to overtake, as well as increased “following distance”. The opposite is true of alcohol. One review of eight driving simulator studies and seven on-road studies found that cannabis use was associated with either poor lane control, or slower driving that successfully maintained lane control. In seven of ten studies cited, cannabis use was associated with a decrease in driving speed despite explicit instructions to maintain a particular speed, whereas under the influence of alcohol, subjects consistently drove faster. Two simulator studies showed that the tendency to overtake was decreased with cannabis use but increased with alcohol. One simulator study and two on-road studies examining car-following behavior concluded that cannabis smokers tend to increase the distance between themselves and the car in front of them. Other studies have found no adverse effects of marijuana use on sign detection, a sudden lane-changing task, or the detection of and response to hazardous events.

The key difference between alcohol and marijuana is that alcohol increases boldness, while marijuana leads to more cautious and defensive driving. Therefore, even though the smoker is less capable of driving than a sober driver, they tend to drive slower, maintain a greater interval with the car ahead of them, and effectively compensate for their impairment. I can personally attest to this, as I have a lead foot when sober, but I have to remind myself to speed up when I'm driving high. I also tend to stay in one lane while driving high, and I'm not nearly as likely to duck and weave through traffic. I've been in a number of fender benders, and gotten more than my share of tickets while sober, but haven't ever had trouble while high.

In short, if the sole reason why we have marijuana prohibition is to keep stoners from driving, then it's not worth the financial cost and infringement on individual liberty required to enforce that policy. Stoned drivers are an irritation, not a public menace.

[Dr Strangelove]

I think you should go back and look at the discussion of the source article. The authors note that most of the epidemeological studies of culpability suffered from severe design flaws, including comparing blood alcohol to blood carboxy-THC levels, using a different test method, urine studies, for the control group, and unacceptably large differences in population numbers between different groups within the study. In fact you might even take note that at the end of the study the authors recommend that marijuana smokers use a designated driver after partaking.

[Felch]

Advising people to have a sober friend drive them home is a far cry from advising that they be incarcerated for the possession of plant matter. If you're tired, if you're taking certain kinds of medication, if you're talking on the phone, if you're distracted by relationship troubles, you're better off letting a friend drive you. Better off letting a friend drive you home doesn't mean that society is better off without you.