Mineshaft_Gap
4077th
That is, they veer off a cliff and plummet.
Since marijuana legalization, highway fatalities in Colorado are at near-historic lows.
Whole article at the link. Obviously it's not fair to say that the roads are safer BECAUSE of legalized marijuana but it certainly seems to hurt the oppositions argument that the roads will become filled with weed crazed maniacs.
Since marijuana legalization, highway fatalities in Colorado are at near-historic lows.
Since Colorado voters legalized pot in 2012, prohibition supporters have warned that recreational marijuana will lead to a scourge of drugged divers on the states roads. They often point out that when the state legalized medical marijuana in 2001, there was a surge in drivers found to have smoked pot. They also point to studies showing that in other states that have legalized pot for medical purposes, weve seen an increase in the number of drivers testing positive for the drug who were involved in fatal car accidents. The anti-pot group SAM recently pointed out that even before the first legal pot store opened in Washington state, the number of drivers in that state testing positive for pot jumped by a third.
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Since the new Colorado law took effect in January, the drugged driver panic has only intensified. Ive already written about one dubious example, in which the Colorado Highway Patrol and some local and national media perpetuated a story that a driver was high on pot when he slammed into a couple of police cars parked on an interstate exit ramp. While the driver did have some pot in his system, his blood-alcohol level was off the charts and was far more likely the cause of the accident. In my colleague Marc Fishers recent dispatch from Colorado, law enforcement officials there and in bordering states warned that theyre seeing more drugged drivers. Congress recently held hearings on the matter, complete with dire predictions such as We are going to have a lot more people stoned on the highway and there will be consequences, from Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.). Some have called for a zero tolerance policy if youre driving with any trace of pot in your system, youre guilty of a DWI. That would effectively ban anyone who smokes pot from driving for up to a couple of weeks after their last joint, including people who legitimately use the drug for medical reasons.
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Of course, the continuing drop in roadway fatalities, in Colorado and elsewhere, is due to a variety of factors, such as better-built cars and trucks, improved safety features and better road engineering. These figures in and of themselves only indicate that the roads are getting safer; they dont suggest that pot had anything to do with it. Were also only seven months in. Maybe these figures will change. Finally, its also possible that if it werent for legal pot, the 2014 figures would be even lower. Theres no real way to know that. We can only look at the data available. But you can bet that if fatalities were up this year, prohibition supporters would be blaming it on legal marijuana. (Interestingly, though road fatalities have generally been falling in Colorado for a long time, 2013 actually saw a slight increase from 2012. So fatalities are down the year after legalization, after having gone up the year before.)
Whole article at the link. Obviously it's not fair to say that the roads are safer BECAUSE of legalized marijuana but it certainly seems to hurt the oppositions argument that the roads will become filled with weed crazed maniacs.
