Sober Thal said:
I vote keep it illegal. I don't want more 'stoners' driving.
I know I'm the millionth guy to quote you, but I offer peace of mind, not argument.
tl;dr warning is in effect.
With that in mind, I'm not going to touch the dead horse that is arguing the effects of cannabis on motor skills; in fact, you're welcome to read my post under the assumption that a stoned driver is every bit as dangerous as a drunk one. What I'd like to focus on is the motivation for driving under the influence. As you probably know through either experience or second-hand knowledge, alcohol causes impairment for a very significant period of time that cannot be shortened, often in excess of several hours, which can lead to quite a dilemma for a person with real-world obligations (job, family, controlling spouse) choosing to drink away from home: tell the world that it has to wait a day because they lacked the foresight to designate a driver... or they'll ask themselves if they're okay to drive. Unfortunately, a lot of people decide that they're maybe-probably-kinda okay enough to make it home, and the result is an inebriated asshole swerving around the road until they stop because they're either parked crooked in their driveway or there's a pedestrian gumming up their axle.
Recreational use of cannabis, on the other hand, has a very, very attractive quality to someone with places to be: you can pretty much come down whenever the hell you want. That's not an exaggeration by any means, as a wide range of mundane activities can intercede almost all of the effects of smoking weed. These activities include walking, eating, drinking, smoking a cigarette, or pretty much any activity that speeds the body's metabolism back up*. I had an experience where I smoked so much weed that I began to lapse into a fever dream-like state. It took about five minutes to pass, after which I stood up for a bit, had some water, smoked a cigarette, and almost immediately afterward, I was hardly high at all
**. The long and short of it is, if I need to drive home after smoking weed, I can be sober and road-safe in a matter of minutes (this statement remains true under the assumption that the effects of cannabis are equally dangerous to drivers as alcohol). Not only that, but if one simply decided to wait it out, they'd need only wait two hours at the most (and that's if they were smoking some ridiculous week's-pay-for-a-quarter-ounce cannabis; the cheaper stuff takes even less time).
Because of this, I believe it is reasonable to assume that far fewer people will decide to operate a vehicle stoned than those that choose to drive drunk, simply because it's very, very easy for them to be sobered up before they set foot in their vehicle. Hope that's a load off your mind for when it
finally becomes legal.
*[sub]Fun fact: the fact that the longevity of the effects of cannabis are inversely proportional to your metabolism's level of activity is the driving concept behind the "wake and bake": your metabolism is slower when you wake up, therefore, your body metabolizes the cannabis slower and the effects last longer than they would halfway through the day after being in "Drive" for a while.[/sub]
**[sub]Fun fact: people think that stoners lounge around all day because pot saps your energy, but for the most part, they're just trying to prolong the effects by avoiding activities that would diminish it.[/sub]
