Could being high get you into more car wrecks? A new study has shown that one in nine drivers involved in fatal car crashes had smoked marijuana before the accident. That's a figure that's three times higher than it was a decade ago, and shows that driving while impaired by the drug may be dangerous to you and others around you.
In order to find out exactly what might be impairing drivers, the researchers examined crash statistics from six states that routinely perform toxicology tests on drivers involved in fatal car wracks. These states included California, Hawaii, Illinoi, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and West Virginia. In all, the data covered more than 23,500 drivers who died within one hour of a wreck between 1999 and 2010. The results were somewhat surprising.
"If a driver is under the influence of alcohol, their risk of a fatal crash is 13 times higher than the risk of the driver who is not under the influence of alcohol, said Guohua Li, one of the researchers, in an interview with WebMD. "But if the driver is under the influence of both alcohol and marijuana, their risk increases to 24 times that of a sober person."
These findings are of particular concern as the legalization of marijuana continues to increase. Marijuana sales became legal in Colorado on Jan. 1, according to USA Today. Since then, marijuana has wound up in everything from beef jerky to cookies to brownies to mints. Massachusetts has also recently awarded the first 20 licenses to operate medical marijuana dispensaries, according to SFGate; and Oregon has had medical marijuana legalized since 2013.
The findings reveal that it's more important than ever to not drive while impaired--whether it be by alcohol or marijuana.
"It's a wake-up call for us in highway safety," said Jonathan Adkins, deputy executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, in an interview with WebMD. "The legalization of pot is going to spread to other states. It's not even a partisan issue at this point. Our expectation is this will become the norm rather than the rarity."
The new study is published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
