by Brad Forrester for The Compassion Chronicles
24 October, 2012
One of the most cited concerns from people who oppose cannabis reform laws is their worry that a driver who has ingested cannabis will lose control of their vehicle, or otherwise cause an accident that may injure or kill someone else who is sober. Because cannabis is an intoxicant, that’s a perfectly reasonable question. As a responsible cannabis consumer myself for over 35 years, I don’t drive when I’m too intoxicated because I don’t want to cause the death of anyone, or the destruction of any property. But I do drive with active cannabinoids in my system, hours after the intoxication has abated, and in violation of the State’s “zero-tolerance” driving law for having any cannabis in my system.
So instead of rattling off some regurgitated, unsubstantiated facts from a pro-pot website to justify my lawless behavior, I decided to find actual crash statistics from Michigan to get an idea of what the numbers say. I found data on the Michigan State Police’s website going back to 2000, well before the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act was introduced to paper, and the numbers tell a story of dramatic declines in virtually every reported category from 2000 through 2011, a period of time that also includes three years of our medical cannabis experiment.
Since at least 2000, the total numbers of accidents, injuries, and fatalities has been falling. The cause of that decline is not something I will address here, I merely wish to illustrate that medical cannabis has not been responsible for any measurable increase in accidents, injuries, or fatalities according to these figures.
The Michigan Medical Marihuana Act was enacted in December of 2008, so if we look at the totals from 2009, the first year people could participate in the program, through 2011, the numbers simply do not justify claims that increased cannabis use leads to more fatalities. Since 2000, there has been a steady decline of fatalities. Between 2009 and 2011, there was a tiny uptick, 18 fatalities, but 2009 was a year with an extremely low number of fatalities. Overall since 2000, there has been a 35% reduction in the total number of statewide traffic fatalities, and a 33% decline in total accidents.
It’s difficult with just a few numbers to conclude that cannabis will help reduce traffic fatalities, but according to these numbers it’s impossible to conclude that increased cannabis use as a result of our medical cannabis law has led to more traffic deaths. Other stunning facts from the MSP 2011 crash data also showed a 3 percent drop in alcohol-involved fatalities, down from 283 in 2010 to 274 in 2011. Drug involvement in fatalities fell 17 percent, from 153 in 2010 to 127 in 2011.
The state has issued over 130,000 registry identification cards to medical cannabis users, most who drive regularly. Certainly if medical cannabis patients were a threat on the roads, we would have seen some evidence to substantiate that claim, but so far there seems to be absolutely no evidence or indication that cannabis is a roadway threat from anyone who consumes it and then drives long after the buzz is gone.
2000-2010 source: http://cheboygannorml.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/MSPCrashHistoryAtAGlance_82570_7.pdf
2011 source: http://www.michigan.gov/msp/0,4643,7-123-1586-276007–,00.html
