cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/scientificarticles/p/1373091/cannabis-edibles-impair-driving-even-below-drug-driving-limits
Researchers analysed 40 regular edible cannabis users, testing their driving skills in a simulator before and after eating THC gummies. Higher doses led to poorer lane control, slower reactions and less consistent speed, while participants also reported feeling less able to drive. The participants’ blood tests came in below the legal thresholds for driving in Canada and New Zealand (5 ng/mL). The researchers say that edibles lead to lower peak blood THC concentrations than smoking, making it difficult to use blood THC levels alone to determine whether someone is actually impaired.
I hate how many people say they drive fine or better high.
When I’m high, I can’t even remember the next sentence I wanted to say was. I know that depends on quantity and type, but at no time while high or after eating an edible, would I have even considered driving a good idea, it even feels like I shouldn’t be near a bonfire.
When you are impaired you cannot accurately assess your behaviour. Objectively speaking, studies show alcohol or cannabis both degrade your reaction time and judgement. If you want the privilege of driving a multi-ton pile of steel going 40+km/h then you need to respect that what you’re doing can change someone else’s (and your own) life in a matter of milliseconds.
I’m fine with people consuming both alcohol and cannabis at their own leisure. I really hate the calls to ban both by people like MADD as well. I find the health claims are not as clear as you’d think.
I agree on principle, but the big problem is it’s extremely subjective. Some people are basically normal when they’re just on one or two bowls. Others, especially newbies or seldom smokers, can sometimes barely string a cohesive thought together after one bowl.
It can even happen to the same person if their smoking habits change. I would definitely know because I’ve been on both sides of the fence multiple times over the years, and it’s been the same for my smoking friends.
You’re probably right, but let’s say you’re high and totally fine, a kid runs into the road and you hit them, how do you defend to the world that this was a tragedy that couldn’t be avoided and not due to impairment? I don’t think you could convince a jury of that, so even if right, you’d be screwed.
But I feel like there should be the obvious study of cannabis users at different levels of THC, and different tolerance histories on a standard obstacle coarse with response times measured when high vs not. I’m shocked that such a study isn’t readily available. That would be the gold standard (within group and within subject, plus dose response).
I did a quick search and found a bunch of “driving simulations” like this which shows that more THC resulted in worse driving and higher speed — which to me says the “I actually drive slower” argument doesn’t work.
But when you look at the actual effect sizes in the studies, they may be statistically significant but practically they’re only tens to hundreds of ms delay in reaction, so it’s hard to get a clear picture. Is 1/30th a second enough to prevent an issue? Over a million people and a million kilometres of driving, it probably adds up, but on an individual level you’d almost never be able to attribute an accident to this. I know my own reaction time to visual stimulus is like 150-300ms when we measured it for a physics lab project years ago (no idea if we did a good job or not), so like 5-10% of that seems fine.
tl;dr I’ve basically argued both ways, I tried doing a fact check and it’s messy, and I’m a little disappointed that the ethics teams can’t figure how to actually study this correctly.
Oh it’s definitely worth studying, and I do not mean to defend “influenced” driving in any way. I only mean to point out any hard-line law is going to be very inadequate for THC.
Hopefully, there are other chemicals that can indicate a tolerance level, otherwise it’ll be near impossible to make an effective law that isn’t simply, “do not drive if under an influence.”. Which… wouldn’t be the worst thing from a safety point of view, but not so good from a, “let people do things that don’t harm others” PoV.
I’ve been rear-ended twice by stoned drivers.
My favorite edible story.
I wonder if they too partook in the stolen chocolate