Driving under influence but not "high"? (NPR)

Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; SCPR.org/Staff, NPR, Feb. 23, 2014

Smells totally crunchy, bro! - I beg your pardon, valued patron? - Medicine for my girlfriend.

  

As cannabis becomes legal, driving concerns grows

Pot is safe until smoked (in a bikini)

Here a customer smells a strain of marijuana while being helped by employee Billy Archilla inside the retail marijuana shop at 3D Cannabis Center, in Denver.

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The Lodo Wellness Center in Denver, Colorado has been selling medical marijuana for several years. But since Jan. 1, 2014, when marijuana in Colorado officially moved from underground to behind-the-counter, they have also been selling legal, recreational pot.
 

Hey, monkey, don't drink and drive! (BO)

A majority of Americans now say they support full legalization, and the trend is spreading: Legal weed is coming soon to Washington state.
 
Meanwhile, the public health community is warning of a potential safety problem: more people driving while stoned, whatever "stoned" means. Health officials and law enforcement do not yet have the data or tools to define or address the concern.

A substance is something to abstain from and avoid if it is being used with the intention of getting high and dissociating. Mindfulness and acceptance would be better strategies.

  
Public perception
Inside the Lodo Wellness Center, shoppers do not seem particularly worried about getting behind the wheel with pot in their systems -- since it lingers in fat for days or weeks, long after one is "high."
 
"You could smoke about an ounce and still have your motor skills," says 39-year-old Dante Cox. "When it comes to one shot of alcohol, all that goes out of the window."
 
Like Cox, several others say it's okay to smoke before driving, and it's definitely safer than drinking [alcohol] and driving.
 

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For advocates of traffic safety, their words are of concern. "I think this is the next big issue in highway safety," says Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governor's Highway Safety Association.

[And it is yet another issue that can be used to push for a more oppressive "police state" in America under every possible pretext.] He tells NPR's Arun Rath that there's a prevalent feeling in American culture that marijuana is no big deal.
 

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"Well, it is a big deal if you use it and then get behind the wheel," he says. "We need to have the same cultural intolerance for marijuana use behind the wheel as we do with alcohol."
 
Alcohol-related crashes still kill around 10,000 people a year, and research clearly shows how drinking alcohol affects driving. The impact of marijuana is much less clear. More

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