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The New York Times Calls for Marijuana Legalization

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Re: The New York Times Calls for Marijuana Legalization

#101

Post by sliverstorm »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #3

I sincerely believe the only people who are against legalisation of marijuana are those who don't understand it's effects on a person and those who are easily susceptible to propaganda and fail to do their own research on the subject. I can't think of even one legitimate reason for it's prohibition. If you argue for prohibition based on health consequences or risk to society you should also be arguing for prohibition…

- Anybody in the black market is going to be against legalization

- How to deal with driving under the influence is not a question with a perfect answer yet

Re: The New York Times Calls for Marijuana Legalization

#102

Post by McDiesel »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #36
McDiesel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the studies that show that MJ use is far less of an impact on driving than talking on a phone... The paranoia over stoned drivers is a little high (no pun intended) Not saying it should be ignored as an issue all together, but it seems to be the last issue the opposition can attach itself to and sound sane, and its getting a little carried away.

Even if that's true the drugs effect is different on each person and the amount you take will vary the effect it has on your driving ability. A couple of puffs probably won't make a difference. But you can also take enough that it's hard to even get out of a chair. The easiest solution and one that should appease everyone would be a total ban on driving within 12/24 hours of last taking marijuana imo.

I get that... its a legitimate concern, as I said. However, its no more legitimate than the other 100s of prescription drugs that can cause drowsiness or slowed reaction time. Or driving with the flu, or driving tired.

Thats the point - there are literally 100s of other ways to be just as (if not more) impaired while driving and be completely legal. We don't parade those issues around (namely because the big pharma companies would like people to not realize just how impairing their products are)

The difference is that there is a large enough group opposed to legalization that they make this issue a primary one in their fight against legalization and blow it vastly out of proportion to the actual scale of the problem.

Re: The New York Times Calls for Marijuana Legalization

#103

Post by anigbrowl »

coob wrote: post #82
DangerousPie wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state has methods at its disposal other than crime an punishment. For example, they can try to influence the behavior of their citizens by education or taxation, like they do with cigarettes or alcohol.

I think the argument made in retort would go along the lines of - What happens if you don't pay the tax, or don't turn up to school? All over a governments abilities boil down in their extreme to their monopoly on violence.

For the nth time, the government doesn't have a monopoly on violence, otherwise there'd be no such thing as the right to self-defense. Even insofar as the state does have coercive powers, it does not follow that all state activity is based on coercion, any more than an individual's legal capacity for violence means that its the locus of their life's activities.

Re: The New York Times Calls for Marijuana Legalization

#104

Post by lostcolony »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #36
McDiesel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the studies that show that MJ use is far less of an impact on driving than talking on a phone... The paranoia over stoned drivers is a little high (no pun intended) Not saying it should be ignored as an issue all together, but it seems to be the last issue the opposition can attach itself to and sound sane, and its getting a little carried away.

Even if that's true the drugs effect is different on each person and the amount you take will vary the effect it has on your driving ability. A couple of puffs probably won't make a difference. But you can also take enough that it's hard to even get out of a chair. The easiest solution and one that should appease everyone would be a total ban on driving within 12/24 hours of last taking marijuana imo.

That's true with alcohol, too, though, it effects people differently. .08 was basically just resolving legal ambiguity by picking a reasonable BAC; it's not like at .079 you can operate a car safely but at .08 you're a danger to everyone on the road.

You can actually be arrested for an 'OUI' in some states, an Operating Under the Influence, for when you are clearly impaired, but fall below the legal cutoff for a DUI. This would likely necessitate being the same sort of thing, a legal recognition that you were driving recklessly, and you exhibit the signs of recent marijuana usage (or if we have some way of actually measuring it, then that too).

Re: The New York Times Calls for Marijuana Legalization

#105

Post by djur »

coob wrote: post #82
DangerousPie wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state has methods at its disposal other than crime an punishment. For example, they can try to influence the behavior of their citizens by education or taxation, like they do with cigarettes or alcohol.

I think the argument made in retort would go along the lines of - What happens if you don't pay the tax, or don't turn up to school? All over a governments abilities boil down in their extreme to their monopoly on violence.

This is a common belief among libertarians, but it doesn't reflect how governments actually work. Governments that have to rely on physical force tend to be unstable, very small, or limited in their ability to effect policies.

Most people's decisions whether to follow or disobey laws are more heavily influenced by social pressures and conventions than the fear of imprisonment or physical assault by cops.

Incidentally, what usually happens when you don't pay taxes is you get nasty letters. If you have wages they might be garnished, and if you have assets they may be seized. Employers comply with garnishments and banks comply with seizures mostly for social reasons, not because of a fear that they will be imprisoned or shot for selflessly protecting a deadbeat.

Re: The New York Times Calls for Marijuana Legalization

#106

Post by McDiesel »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #35
Alex3917 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk of driving after using marijuana is comparable to the risk of driving after using penicillin, which isn't illegal. Furthermore, the risk is far less than the risk of driving at .08, which is legal in most states. While I'm not advocating that people drive while stoned, it's not clear that there is a legal problem that needs to be solved.

Marijuana delays reaction time. Does penicillin?

benadryl does. And nyquill. Allegra and claritin can as well (though to a lesser degree). thats not mentioning the 100s of prescription drugs that do. None of them need a roadside test, why does MJ?

Re: The New York Times Calls for Marijuana Legalization

#107

Post by DigitalJack »

jebus989 wrote: post #55
Alex3917 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk of driving after using marijuana is comparable to the risk of driving after using penicillin, which isn't illegal. Furthermore, the risk is far less than the risk of driving at .08, which is legal in most states. While I'm not advocating that people drive while stoned, it's not clear that there is a legal problem that needs to be solved.

I've got to query this, I don't believe antibiotics like penicillin cause any motor/visual impairment

Antibiotics and other medication can destroy your hearing. Common anti anxiety medications effect your sense of balance to the point falling.

I don't agree with the GP however. There are significant differences in effect between the strains of MJ that it isn't rational to make statements like the GP.

http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/tc/medicines-that-cause... http://www.drugs.com/clonazepam.html

Re: The New York Times Calls for Marijuana Legalization

#108

Post by dgacmu »

nick_riviera wrote: post #52
asgeir wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It annoys me when people use healthcare cost as something to be counted against recreational drugs. It seems to me that this reasoning could equally be applied to every avoidable burden on the health system. As an analogy. As far as I know heart disease is one of the main causes of healthcare costs and death. Obesity leads to an increased risk of heart disease. Does this mean that we should have a government mandated…

Very much so. Isn't public health about reducing avoidable risks and keeping the population healthy?

Isn't the goal of public policy to balance the interests of all of the involved constituents? Public health is about taking effective measures to keep the population as a whole healthy, and part of that is finding effective ways to reduce those bad things.

In that context, you're getting slapped because you're ignoring the fetid mess that the US drug policy has caused, and that our current drug policy is not being very effective for public health or public spending: (a) It's horribly racially biased: https://www.aclu.org/billions-dollars-wasted-racially-biased...

(b) It's incredible expensive (ibid), to the tune of billions of dollars per year in paying for enforcement, incarceration, and lost productivity;

(c) It doesn't obviously reduce use rates! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448346/

You don't have to be a fan of drug use to appreciate this mess. I'm not - speaking personally, I'm about as negative about the issue as one can get, for drugs, alcohol, and tobacco all together. But that's not the point. Barring some actually worthwhile, cost-effective, and fair method of enforcement, which nobody in the US has stumbled upon yet, we need to stop pissing away money putting nearly 1% of our population in jail [1] where not only do we burden them forever with a criminal conviction, we introduce them to a lot of real criminals and set them on the path to real crime.

Putting someone in jail in NYC for a year costs $167,000 [2]. Surely we could do some more effective prevention and education with that money. Or take it and try to reduce alcohol DUI fatalities or tobacco use, both of which are currently more deadly than pot use.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/nyregion/citys-annual-cost...

Re: The New York Times Calls for Marijuana Legalization

#109

Post by dalke »

llllllllllll wrote: post #81
nick_riviera wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are quite clearly an absolute dire example of a complete fucking moron if you think that smoking weed doesn't affect your driving. It affects your judgement, your motor skills, slows your reaction time and so can the withdrawal symptoms. I'm not even going to link a page because it's that easy to find supporting information that is credible.

Many retrospective studies of crash incidents have not found an increased risk with marijuana use. In my personal experience, it's effects are slight but drivers appear to compensate for their impairment by driving slower and being more careful in other ways, hence the findings of the recent survey study below (the lead researcher is quoted in the NY Times article). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24411797 http://…

Based only on the abstract (the text is behind a paywall), it appears the first paper only discusses "the drivers' risk of being killed in a fatal crash", and not overall crash incidents, which is the point of your first sentence.

In addition, the abstract's conclusion starts "Although overall, drugs contribute to crash risk regardless of the presence of alcohol, such a contribution is much lower than that by alcohol." (Emphasis mine.) This seems to contradict your statement that there is not an increased risk with marijuana use. (The NYT article seems to confuse the two when it talks about "risk of a fatal accident" in one paragraph then "risk of a crash" in the second.)

Instead, I think the paper you want, which is a bit older (from 2012) but not behind a firewall, is http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3276316/ . It says:

> Experimental studies have shown modest functional impairment, but debate exists over how well these experimental studies translate into real-life driving situations (41). Epidemiologic studies, however, have shown contradictory results (39, 42, 43). ... it is unclear whether marijuana plays a significant role in crash causation.

The paper itself is a meta-analysis. They write:

> Results of this meta-analysis indicate that marijuana use by drivers is associated with a significantly increased risk of crash involvement. Specifically, drivers who test positive for marijuana or self-report using marijuana are more than twice as likely as other drivers to be involved in motor vehicle crashes.

It then very emphatically points out that this conclusion is not strong enough for public policy decisions, and that there are many possible confounding factors.

This conclusion is also mentioned in the NYT link you posted: "Still, it is clear that marijuana use causes deficits that affect driving ability, Dr. Huestis said. She noted that several researchers, working independently of one another, have come up with the same estimate: a twofold increase in the risk of an accident if there is any measurable amount of THC in the bloodstream."

Thus, I think it's enough to suggest that your first line is likely incorrect.

Re: The New York Times Calls for Marijuana Legalization

#110

Post by tspike »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #16
acomjean wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legalize it, But there are some real issues to be worked out, as someone who had a friend sent to hospital after being hit by a stoned driver who blew through a stop sign. Whats the legal limit? I'm not sure how easy it is to detect if someone is "under the influence" as the drug is detectable for weeks in the blood (in this case the join was in the car).

>> But there are some real issues to be worked out, as someone who had a friend sent to hospital after being hit by a stoned driver who blew through a stop sign. Whats the legal limit? Sorry that happened to your friend. Was it proven that the driver was stoned? If so I'm guessing they have an accurate way to measure it. Either way this is always going to be a problem. Look at the number of people killed by drunk dri…

There is no reliable way to chemically measure intoxication from marijuana. All the tests show is the presence of THC in the system. Hair tests can detect use as far back as 6 months, urine tests for 3 weeks, blood tests for 72 hours (typically used in accident investigations). Saliva tests, having a shorter duration of ~12 hours would be more ideal, but have an effectiveness cutoff of 50ng. The current legal limit in CO and WA is 5ng.

All that said, there's little correlation between the amount of THC in one's system and the level of intoxication. A chronic user (no pun intended) will have a much higher concentration of THC in their system and be affected less by it as compared to say, a tourist coming in and trying it for the first time in 20 years.

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