By Badweather
“There’s only one thing worse than being talked about. Not being talked about.” ~ Oscar Wilde
Why is driving while stoned even an issue? You smoke, you fall asleep, when you wake up you drive. Unless…
HB 13-1114, I call it the Dirty f*cking hippies don’t get to drive anymore law, basically it says that if you choose marijuana as medicine or as recreation on a daily basis you will never drive again, ever. Disclosure: I’m a dirty hippie.
In some cases, if HB13-1114 actually becomes law, it may be the equivalent of permanent in home arrest for many medical marijuana patients as well as recreational users that use more than once per month. Smoking a bit of cannabis on the weekends could conceivably prevent you from operating heavy equipment for the better part of the beginning of each week.
But why?
We already have a procedure, it’s called being careful until you know how your medication effects your ability to operate heavy machinery, and that includes the operation of any state legislature, arguably a very large and particularly dangerous piece of machinery.
I’ve got an idea, how about requiring that any politician that purports to legislate any marijuana legislation be required by Colorado State law to do their homework. First thing, you must smoke a joint. If you can still remember what you were doing after that, by all means proceed to eat the brownie. No, not that one, this one….
Any questions?:
Maybe we should measure political wit in nano-grams.
It is also an unnecessary measure by just about any stretch of the imagination but never mind the facts, we’ve got to protect alcohol and prohibition of marijuana.
Nevermind that the road fatalities were reduced by 19% (among 20 year olds) in states that legalized medical marijuana, probably because less people drank because marijuana is safer, doesn’t cause a hangover, and doesn’t cause road fatalities itself. So, never mind that marijuana is safer for our children…
From the Denver Post:
The study — by University of Colorado Denver professor Daniel Rees and Montana State University professor D. Mark Anderson — found that the traffic-death rate drops by nearly 9 percent in states after they legalize marijuana for medical use. The researchers arrived at that figure, Rees said, after controlling for other variables such as changes in traffic laws, seat-belt usage and miles driven. The study stops short of saying the medical-marijuana laws cause the drop in traffic deaths.
“We were pretty surprised that they went down,” Rees said Tuesday.
The study was posted this month on the website of the Bonn, Germany- based Institute for the Study of Labor and has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Rees said the main reason for the drop appears to be that medical-marijuana laws mean young people spend less time drinking and more time smoking cannabis. Legalization of medical marijuana, the researchers report, is associated with a 12-percent drop in the alcohol-related fatal-crash rate and a 19-percent decrease in the fatality rate of people in their 20s, according to the study.
Furthermore:
The study also found that medical- marijuana legalization is associated with a drop in beer sales.
“The result that comes through again and again and again is (that) young adults . . . drink less when marijuana is legalized and traffic fatalities go down,” Rees said.
The study is sure to add fuel to a debate over the impacts of Colorado’s medical-marijuana boom on traffic safety, which has embroiled cannabis advocates and law enforcement officials for more than a year.
From DenverPost.com
Meanwhile at the Colorado State Legislature…
*** crickets ***
The key thing here is that drunk drivers always underestimate how drunk they are, while marijuana smokers generally either overestimate or accurately estimate, how stoned they are.
So, the idea that driving while stoned is actually dangerous in comparison to drinking alcohol, if you compare the two, they are as different as apples and oranges as the saying goes.
But we want to pretend some more I suppose.
But the truth is… wait for it… Marijuana is the smart choice when it comes to recreational drugs.
And that brings me to another point, it’s ok to do recreational drugs. The illegality of marijuana has just prevented what just so happens to be the safest drug known to mankind from being the drug of choice we all prefer.
So now that we all know the truth, you’ll be havin’ to get over your prohibition and the best medicine I can offer you, as a politician who has made their living bashing dirty hippies all their lives, you may have a rude awakening coming up sometime in the future, you might want to sit down and smoke a joint. We’ve been right all along, it’s safe, it’s ok to be a stoner, and yeah, you can drive more safely under the influence of marijuana, millions of people do it all the time. With either oxy’s or doobies, either way, it’s ok. Just be careful.
Of course politicians, high on the war on drugs, may think differently about these things:
No one that smokes marijuana regularly can drive anymore if HB 13-1114 passes in the Colorado state legislature. That’s right, instead of being happy about one of the results of legalizing medical marijuana, the lower number of 20 year old kids killed in traffic fatalities, they feel the need to penalize otherwise responsible adults for their use of cannabis.
Ok.
Fine, I don’t really like driving anyway, I mean, even though the commercials do portray driving as this quintessential American thing that we all love doing, we mostly hate it anyway so screw it, admit you hate doing it, and stop because it’s illegal to be you. You pot smoking dirty f*cking hippie!
And if my choice is either drive or take my medicine, I’ll just not drive. I’d rather be pain free. Hanging out with a bunch of drunk losers is lame anyway right?
But this is a bit like saying, people that smoke marijuana aren’t really people.
I’ve watched my people be marginalized for 40 years now.
Piss tested out of the work place.
Now about to be piss tested off the road.
All for the lies about not just a plant but the safest, most therapeutic medicine ever discovered by mankind.
A plant that causes mothers who smoke it to be 50% less likely to lose their babies to either stillbirth, miscarriage, or SIDS in the first two years of life. (which I think is totally worth not driving for btw)
A plant which makes drivers go slower, not faster.
A plant that people know they’re high on, unlike alcohol which makes you feel “godlike” somewhere around 5 beers or so…
Marijuana, a plant which cures cancer instead of causing it like alcohol and tobacco, should be marginalized, after all, the profits of CEO’s in the “health care industry” will plummet in a hemp economy based on the safest, most therapeutic plant ever discovered by mankind. Certainly we should marginalize the people that spent their lives cultivating it and selling it to patients that needed it.
Certainly we should penalize those people who choose a natural herb, one actually less toxic than tomatoes, to treat their illnesses, and cure their diseases and prevent their cancers.
Marijuana users should clearly be marginalized to death or at the very least total ostricization and character assassination. It should be obvious to everyone, that anyone who chooses to use the safest medicine ever, should be marginalized, beaten down, and told every day they really don’t rate the level of human being, quite…
Why not just kill us all? Oh that’s right, you are. With GMO’s we don’t have a right to know about, I see the pattern. Not knowing is better than knowing. Clearly…
Here’s what I do know.
I’ve driven while high on marijuana most of my life. It’s like the label says, be careful until you know how it effects you’re ability to operate heavy machinery.
It’s just like Oxycodone, you should be careful until you know how it affects you. If you can’t drive, marijuana is not a drug that will hide that from you like alcohol does. When you’re stoned, you don’t even want to drive. But if you need to you can.
The zero tolerance, for science and the vindictive legislation that makes virtual home bound prisoners of a person who chooses to use marijuana as their medicine is draconian to say the least. But I’m going to make a prediction:
This will backfire on them.
For one thing, walking and riding my bike is already my choice of transportation so if the legislature is attempting to turn us all into dirty hippies, they’re doing it right. We don’t care about your silly cars anyway…
So, Thanks. I think….
Source: HempSaves.Net
