Marijuana and Driving

The article is about a study on fatal car accidents and involves a study group of clean individuals and a group of drug users. Alcohol is considered a drug in this study. Drugs were detected in almost half of all the accidents. The study used risk factors as well as determining who was responsible for the accident and determining what they had in their system. Unlike other studies that included anyone in the car that had drugs or alcohol in their system which wouldn’t be that much of a factor in the crash. The risk is “defined as the odds ratio of a drug group over the drug-free control group.” The study, as you can expect, confirmed that alcohol will greatly increase the chance of a fatal accident. Drugs, other than alcohol, had much less of an effect then alcohol.  Subjects who had several drugs in their system tended to be more responsible for accidents. However, they saw that marijuana actually showed a negative impact on risk, unlike all other drugs that had a slight positive impact. They believe this may be to drivers under the influence of marijuana being more cautious and driving slower. I believe that you shouldn’t drive under the influence of marijuana, although I don’t think it is anywhere as dangerous as driving under the influence of alcohol. As we learned in class, in Colorado and Washington you can get a DUI for driving under the influence of marijuana. I don’t think that is fair, and that instead you should only get a fine and nothing on your record since as the study shows driving under the influence of alcohol and marijuana is completely different. If you get pulled over and fail a field sobriety test however then I wouldn’t be against harsher penalties since you are impaired and most likely couldn’t operate the vehicle as well. I also don’t think that they should determine if you fail based on a certain amount in your system since people can handle their high better then others.

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