Montgomery Co. readies for impact of new statewide marijuana law
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Anonymous
Your elected officials intentionally made it harder to find drugged drivers and build cases against them. It’s important to the industry that the government do nothing to deter any cannabis use, including by minors. You would think we would have learned lessons from regulating alcohol and tobacco but we did not. Give it a couple years and the industry will be screaming for more enforcement and harsher penalties for unlicensed distribution as they find their legal operations can’t compete with criminals. But they will still fight any measures to get drugged drivers off the road because that’s their core customer base. |
Anonymous
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As if we didn’t have enough problems with education, we decided to add drugs in the mix. It sounds like they haven’t fully researched the effects of exposure to kids, but what they do know is pretty dire.
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/what-you-should-know-about-using-cannabis-including-cbd-when-pregnant-or-breastfeeding https://www.cdc.gov/marijuana/health-effects/second-hand-smoke.html Then, let’s make a drug legal. Surely people who are stoned will have the good sense not to drive under the influence, after all Maryland drivers are known as paragons of safety. It may be illegal to drive under the influence, but without a legal limit or reliable test, how is that enforceable? https://www.wbaltv.com/amp/article/cannabis-impaired-driving-weed-marijuana-police-baltimore-county/44309574 I still don’t understand how this passed, and by such a wide margin. Are 2/3 of voters really addicted to marijuana? I support access to medical marijuana, but legalizing recreational use is an insanity that will be a disaster for our state. |
Anonymous
Officers can still perform roadside sobriety tests despite your fear mongering. If a person is driving dangerously you don’t need a drug test to prove it. |
Anonymous
We did learn lessons from regulating alcohol and tobacco and that's why cannabis is now legal….just like alcohol and tobacco. |
Anonymous
But a test/limit sets a reference point. If a stoned driver is trying to make a qualitative judgement on whether or not his judgement is too impaired to drive, I suspect his judgement is likely to be too impaired to make an objective determination. With alcohol, people know there’s an objective limit and can plan accordingly. Even so, we still have problems with drunk driving. Granted, if a person is driving dangerously, whether or not they’re under the influence of anything, they can be held accountable. However, to get to that point, other drivers (not to mention cyclists, pedestrians, etc.) have been out at risk. Before we increase the danger by opening the floodgate to marijuana, I just think we need to preemptively consider standards that their drug-addled brains might possibly consider before they climb behind the will. As for fear mongering, data shows that legalizing marijuana makes the roads more dangerous. According to this article, that’s due, in part, to prople not fully appreciating the degree of impairment. https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-07-19/where-pot-became-legal-car-crash-deaths-rose-study |
Anonymous
Yes, fear mongering. Your own citation reads: “Farmer doesn't believe marijuana legalization is the only cause of rising collision rates, and the study can't prove a direct cause-and-effect relationship. And unlike alcohol testing, there are no objective measures of impairment linked to marijuana, so it's not possible to accurately account for the role marijuana plays in car crashes, he said. The changes in crash rates varied by state: Colorado had the biggest jump (18%) and California the smallest (6%) after both legalization and the start of retail sales. Nevada’s rate fell (7%). For fatal crashes, increases occurred in Colorado (1%) and Oregon (4%), while declines were found in Washington (2%), California (8%) and Nevada (10%).” You are clearly fear mongering when you knowingly frame this kind of statistical data as conclusive when the truth is that these are very complex issues that are not so simple. One thing that I know for a fact is that many good and kind people will no longer face jail time and financial ruin for merely consuming cannabis. That is a good thing. I can see your true intent with your “drug addled brain” comment and I am aware that all of this concern trolling is mostly about personal hate against cannabis users. Do you question the judgment of your work colleagues who drink at night and then start off with a dose of caffeine first thing in the morning? |
Anonymous
Prohibition and regulation aren’t the same thing. You can learn lessons from prohibition but not learn lessons from regulation. |
Anonymous
Anonymous
I don’t think drinking in moderation at home (ex. a glasd of wine or a beer with dinner) is necessarily a problem. I do question the judgement of someone who gets drunk. I think anyone who drives while drunk is displaying a complete lack of judgement. I’m not sure what your point is with the coffee. I don’t think drinking coffee is a cause to question someone’s judgement. I wouldn’t expect it to be a cure for intoxication, but presumably my hypothetical drinking coworkers would have slept off the alcohol. If despite sleep (and coffee), their hangover is so severe they can’t fulfill their responsibilities, then yes, I would say they used faulty judgement. FWIW, my freshman year of college, I was not a caffeine drinker. I abhorred coffee and soda, and didn’t particularly like tea, so my tolerance was very low. Everyone I knew drank copious amounts of coffee, so it didn’t occur to me it could be problematic. During exams, I stayed up all night drinking coffee and chasing it with M&Ms. I had no idea anything was wrong until i finished studying and tried to rest a little before class. My entire body was vibrating and I was certain I was going to have a heart attack. I consider that was a case where my judgement was bad, but I learned and was more careful from then on. I would also note that I didn’t drive in that condition. I do not hate cannabis users. I do however hate needless suffering and death. This debate is reminding me of the gun debate. I don’t hate gun owners, but I hate the suffering and death that easy access to guns allows. I think both cannabis and guns are dangerous substances that need to be restricted. |
Anonymous
You are also allowing yourself the luxury of choice regarding your personal caffeine intake despite experiencing negative effects. You self regulated. Cannabis users can do the same. You also compared cannabis to guns after voicing your support for adults to consume alcohol as they see fit. So alcohol and caffeine are fine even if you feel some level of scorn, yet cannabis is a dangerous substance [sic] like guns and should be restricted by force of law. Why wouldn’t that come across as hating cannabis users? At any rate, I think you will just have to learn how to adjust your expectations because cannabis is now legal for recreational use. |
Anonymous
You are misinterpreting my posts, to the extent that it seems deliberate. I didn’t say alcohol and caffeine were fine. I said I considered getting drunk to indicate faulty judgement. I obviously think no one should drive drunk. I also said that I had personally had a problem with caffeine due to my own poor judgement. I was responding to your questions about judgement, not the substances themselves. I don’t consider alcohol fine. It is, in fact, a poison. It is especially dangerous for the liver. However, there are lots of things that are bad for a person, that we do anyway. The problem with marijuana and excessive alcohol is that it affects brain function. Not only is your judgement too impaired to drive, your judgement is liable to be too impaired to make a sound evaluation on your fitness to drive. That’s why I think we need objective legal standards to consider when making that determination. When marijuana is smoked, it has the additional disadvantage of harming those around you. I understand that as it is legal, I will have to adjust my expectations. I expect there will be a significant increase in car crashes. I also expect that we will lose a significant part of a generation as their developing minds are damaged by exposure. An earlier poster said we learned lessons from tobacco, and I think they’re right. Big tobacco lied to us for decades. My grandparents started smoking as teens, when it was seen as relatively harmless. We learned with cigarette smoke that breathing something in affects every part of the body. I expect people with long term exposure will be likely to develop similar conditions, placing an even heavier burden on a health system that’s already struggling. Marijuana, however, seems to especially affect the brain. We know that alcohol can have devastating effects on a developing fetus, but with marijuana, we’re looking at roughly eighteen years of exposure, on top of whatever prenatal exposure they have. So I expect increased discipline problems, an even less educated populace that is raised to have a drug problem, an eventual rise in crime and further erosion of our society as a whole. My grandparents who smoked, one was on oxygen for years, and died from an aggressive cancer. One had neuropathy that they said was from all those years of smoking and it felt like her leg was on fire. Vision problems, heart problems, digestive problems, some dementia. Smoking was not the only factor. As either you or another poster said, these are complicated issues, but it was definitely a contributing factor to most of their problems. My one grandparent who had stopped smoking, had a markedly different quality of life. While my other grandparents were practically bedridden, he led a full life. In the end, he had a heart attack because he was out planting trees in his yard (not seedlings, trees). Despite how you keep trying to convince me, I do not hate cannabis users. I don’t even hate my ex-husband (not a cannibis user) and that took a lot of work. However, to mislead people about the dangers to themselves, their children, and others - I wouldn’t treat my worst enemy like that. You seem obsessed with hate. I’m not going to presume to guess what you may be feeling, but you might examine your motivations and try to identify your personal biases. Everyone has biases, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s good to be aware of everyone’s biases, starting with our own. I am definitely biased, but it’s not hate against marijuana users, or even marijuana itself (I support medical marijuana). I am biased against needless suffering and death, especially of those who are hurt because of someone else’s choices. Yes, I wish recreational marijuana was still illegal. For that matter, I’d be quite happy if we tried Prohibition again. But having “adjusted my expectations”, I don’t expect either to happen. That being a given, I think we should do everything we can to minimize the danger. What seems a good starting place is setting a standard, developing a reliable test in regards to the standard, only allow forms that restrict the effects to the user. Society eventually recognized that secondhand smoke was dangerous. There are multiple forms of cannabis, it doesn’t have to be smoked. This is why it reminds me of the gun control debate. Both cases have a side saying I want what I want, regardless of who is hurt, and you can’t try to regulate it or restrict the most hazardous forms. |
Anonymous
Sorry, guns kill, cannabis doesn't. That's where your comparison falls flat. Once again, nobody said you had to like cannabis legalization. Just deal with it. |
Anonymous
If somebody has a fatal accident while driving under the influence of cannabis, the person isn’t any less dead than if it was an alcohol related crash or a gunshot. Why are you opposed to establishing a standard, like we established decades ago for alcohol, in an effort to reduce fatalities from drunk driving? |
Anonymous
\ What? It should be legal to smoke marijuana and illegal to drive under the influence. Oh wait, that is the law. Those people all drove illegally. |
Anonymous
It might be years, if never, until a suitable test for current impairment under cannabis is available. We shouldn't be waiting to legalize cannabis until then. |