Did traffic fatalities increase or decrease after marijuana legalization?
Is marijuana impaired driving a public health and safety concern? Now, since legalization, the number of marijuana impaired driving tickets has increased in Washington state and among drivers involved in fatal motor vehicle crashes in Colorado. The percentage of people testing positive for marijuana use also increased. But in both cases, this “may simply reflect a general increase in marijuana use” overall. As I explain in my video “Marijuana’s Effects on Car Accidents,” this does not mean that marijuana is the cause of the accident.
There’s plenty of evidence linking marijuana use to traffic accidents, but who uses marijuana? Young people and men mostly. And who do you think is at higher risk of accidents, regardless of what they smoke? Young people and men. However, even taking this into account, it appears that “approximately 20 to 30% of traffic accidents caused by cannabis use occur due to cannabis use.” But to put that into perspective, when it comes to alcohol, that number is closer to 85%.
Wouldn’t a marijuana crash be a fender flex at low speed by an impaired driver going about 8 mph? “In a systematic review of the literature, studies examining acute cannabis consumption and motor vehicle crashes found that drivers are nearly twice as likely to be involved in a motor vehicle crash and suffer serious injury or death. It turned out that.” This is pretty serious, but alcohol is even more serious. Marijuana can double or triple the risk of a car accident, while alcohol can increase the risk by 6 to 15 times. This combination could be even worse: If you test positive for both marijuana and alcohol, you are 25 times more likely to be involved in a fatal accident.
The “safety implications of increased incidence of cannabis intoxication” when driving is cited as one of the “three main reasons for concern about legalized cannabis.” So what happened in the US states where marijuana was legalized? How much did traffic fatalities increase? They didn’t. In fact, they fell. what? “Why does legalizing medical marijuana reduce traffic fatalities?” Because people drink less alcohol. It was found that “legalization of medical cannabis is associated with decreased alcohol consumption, especially among young people.” In other words, drug driving has increased, but drunk driving has decreased. The overall number of deaths has decreased because drunk driving is much more serious.
So perhaps by replacing some of the alcohol use with cannabis, liver disease and alcohol-induced brain damage will also be reduced. In fact, researchers found that “cannabis, unlike alcohol, does not cause liver or other gastrointestinal problems, is not fatal in overdose, and does not appear to be as neurotoxic as alcohol; It is unlikely that it will result.” It wasn’t as powerful a cause of car accidents as alcohol. ”
“Health problems reported by people addicted to cannabis (e.g. bronchitis and memory problems) are, on average, much more severe than health problems reported by people addicted to alcohol (e.g. delirium, liver disease, gastritis).” “This doesn’t mean cannabis dependence is a major problem.” But public health officials may be criticized if they bring it up. For example, in the 1940s and 1950s in the United States after the end of Prohibition, there was a need to warn people about the problems of heavy drinking, cirrhosis, and alcoholism. Some people ignored it. ” We are currently witnessing a similar situation where public health experts want to educate people about the negative health effects of cannabis, but are dismissed as “freezer mad” hysteria. I’m doing it.
Still, it’s important to keep these negative health effects in perspective. How does marijuana safety compare to alcohol and tobacco? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “alcohol is associated with approximately 88,000 deaths per year,” whereas ” There have been no reported deaths from cannabis.” (From car accidents, etc.) And since alcohol is far more harmful, it will go down even more if more people smoke marijuana. “In hindsight, we can clearly see that tobacco and alcohol have caused tremendous problems for many individuals and society” – both are legal drugs. “If you were asked to decide which psychoactive drugs are legal today, marijuana (which rarely kills people) would likely be judged to be relatively harmless”, far down the list. may be ranked high.
There are many other videos about cannabis, so please check them out if you are interested. See related posts below.
We first published these videos in a webinar, but you can find them all as digital downloads here.
