[Coach]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

Matata, what I have yet to hear is if there are sufficient road side tests.

There isn't yet.

Originally Posted by polak

Oh I'm definitely not saying that I'm a fan of people who drive after smoking. Quite the opposite. I don't know how people handle it, the paranoia must be legit.

I'm just saying that I'm not sure that the concerns that Stoned drivers are going to become some big problem are founded on anything besides a lack of understanding. People equate it to drinking when the effects are so much different. All of the things that cause people to drive after drinking like over-confidence and underestimating their impairment are opposite when you smoke marijuana (from my experience). It's almost like a safety net. You're very aware that you're not in good shape to do certain things.

But then again like you said, some people feel perfectly fine driving stoned, my original point was that it doesn't seem like these people are getting caught very frequently, either by checkstops or getting caught driving poorly or causing an accident. So either they're driving and behavior is actually fine like they claim even though they smoked or the police is choosing not tell us about all of the Marijuana related DUI's for some reason. If you consider my first point in this post I think that leads me to believe it's the former. People who smoke know in what shape they are and what they can and can't do.

I think a large factor is where these activities take place. Currently there aren't places where you go smoke and party like there is for booze. Most people who are smoking pot are doing it at their own house, or that of a friend. You likely don't need to drive anywhere until you come down anyways, if at all. People who are stoned tend to move as little as possible, so yes, they are probably only every driving as far as their closest drive thru. Whereas with booze, every Friday and Saturday night you have 1000's of people flooding out of bars drunk looking for ways to get home. It stands to reason that there's just a larger percentage of people who are driving drunk than stoned, likely farther, and more likely through unfamiliar places.

And yes, I do believe that the effects of alcohol are much more of a driving impairment than the effects of weed. But they are both affecting your brain.

Originally Posted by Matata

There's a whole galaxy of mind altering pharmaceuticals out there, should each one get it's own specialized testing procedure?

For sure. And I am not comfortable with people driving on those either. Everything that goes into pharamceutical circulation probably should have a tet for impairment, yes. If one person is going to jail for drinking and driving, I want the same for people who are pill popping and driving.