Legal Lazy

[bxray]

Well, with more impaired drivers expect more people to drop in your yard.

Last fathers day I had a get together and a lady under the influence of alcohol went off road across the street 400’ from my house. Then shot across the street dukes of hazard style and landed in one end of my front yard.

Then flipped 6 times end over end 200’ to the other end of the yard!

My son parked his truck on the other side of the yard in the shade to give room for guests to park.

Took out his left front end!

Luckily for the guest, they were parked out of the way of her path. Otherwise she would have landed upside down on one of their vehicles at a high rate of speed and most likely died.

And we were all in the back yard!

Somehow she lived. She had her seat belt on and this kept her from ejecting from the car.

Sure did ruin my fathers day!



Ray

 

[bxray]

And she was only 1/2 a mile from her destination.

Ray

 

[bxray]

Luckily she took out the bad headlight.
It had a leak and was always wet inside.

 

[bearbait]

I just read where the Canucks have approved marijuana legal for recreational use while I disagree this is not the question.
DUI in each state has a legal limit of alcohol consumption, that when exceeded puts you in violation of the law, not that any one in here has ever done anything like that.
Now the question I have is how can a person be considered to be under the influence of weed?
We have tests for alcohol, but as far as I can find out nothing to determine for drugs, without blood work and so on.
And what are the legal limits, how can they be enforced, can they be enforced and what are my legal rights?
Maybe I am over thinking this, but impairment is impairment no matter what cause, I have seen it underground and dead is freekin dead.
And what happens when someone doing a lefty crashes in to your kids.
Sorry but I see this as a big dog waiting to bite someone right in the ass. Anyone have a logical answer for me?

Myself I don't agree with it. Impaired is impaired whether it be alcohol, marijuana or even a cell phone. The price to pay is way too high if you screw up. I'm just glad I grew up when I did because I don't like the way this is going. We just had friends here for a week and my buddy and I spent countless hours in the boat fishing and neither of us seen the need to bring alcohol.

 

[torch]

On the lighter side...

We had a call Friday night for a person reported having a stroke. Patient, female >40, was complaining of slurred speech, nausea, 'shakiness' and confusion. She didn't present as a stroke victim. Some further digging brought out the real history:

It seems that she had heard of the impending legalization, and was wondering what it was all about, never having tried marijuana before. So her helpful son thoughtfully provided her with half a marijuana cookie. (After trying to get dosage info out of the son, I'm pretty sure I know what happened to the other half.)

I had a heck of a time keeping a straight face and professional demeanour after that. I did manage to refrain from cracks like "take two chips and call me in the morning", but I couldn't resist asking how she was liking the experience so far and I had to turn around and bite my tongue when she mournfully replied "it's not for me!"

My crew had our bags all repacked by the time the ambulance arrived and we left her for them to deal with. I suspect this is just the start of a looooong summer.

 

[CaveCreekRay]

We have way more than our share of DUI accidents here in Phoenix. Many of them are wrong-way drivers that somehow manage to get on the freeway bass-ackwards and drive at a high rate of speed in the commuter lane (far left if you are going the right direction) thinking they are in the right, or slow, lane.

After 20 or so of these as well as other drunk driving accidents elsewhere, I started to note a weird trend. The sober driver hit by the drunk nearly always dies. Yet, in these same accidents, the drunk survives. Its the same accident, a head on, and the G forces should be almost the same on both occupants but, the person who is totally 'faced somehow survives, more often than not.

I am beginning to wonder if there is not something about alcohol that increases you tolerance to blunt force trauma. It's as if, when highly inebriated, your "soul" is far more tolerant of damage to your physical body. Alcohol seems to serve as an "airbag" preventing what would otherwise be a fatal impact. If you are stone sober and take the same hit, you soul disconnects and departs.

Anyone else notice this phenomenon?

 

[torch]

Anyone else notice this phenomenon?

Yes, in my experience drunks bounce rather than break. I suspect they just don't tense up the way a sober person will at the moment of impact.

 

[D2Cat]

Yes, it seems to be an odd result of less damage in sudden force trauma! The one violating the law lives and lets the taxpayers finance his housing, health and lawyer.

 

[jryser]

This is a good and thoughtful thread. Like many on the list, I’m not fond of the way both addiction and the way the harm reductionist model is going - at least where opioids are concerned.

We can’t chemically coddle people into sobriety. We will not be able to arrest people into sobriety, although arrests and the absolute discomfort of those consequences often raise the “bottom” for those who want to change.

My opinion has always been when the pain of remaining the same outweighs the pain of change, people will change. And people with the disease of addiction (brain disease in a social context), HAVE to change people places and things in order to recover. And as someone said earlier, it’s chronic and CAN be relapsing, and this is where the responsibility lies squarely on the person who has addiction.

The disease model (so well scientifically supported that to argue would be like arguing gravity) EXPLAINS but DOES NOT EXCUSE behavior.

I have no problem with someone getting blasted to oblivion in their own home; bring it to the rest of society now I and my family and yours are brought into it.

The US is trying to solve this by chemically coddling people with more drugs - mood altering drugs for a “lifetime” - and this is where I get nuts. They were not meant to be used that way but - we all know why...

Money.

And once money is taken out of the picture then we can rationally do things differently. Well try to anyway!

My two cents on a very cool thread!!!

By the way Skeets - urine tox screen folks use the same “addict logic” to utilize screen results. There’s a threshold that, even if you were to spend a day in a phone booth with somebody doing the left-hand smoke, you would not cross. The user’s urine screen would demonstrate a positive beyond the threshold. They had enough people making claims they were in phone booths. So they created that threshold!

Sadly addiction is one of those denial-based behavioral diseases where creativity and intelligence makes it a lot harder to get sober. Most people with addiction are extremely intelligent and extremely creative. That’s what makes denial so hard to bust through.

[emoji1360]


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[CaveCreekRay]

Yes, in my experience drunks bounce rather than break. I suspect they just don't tense up the way a sober person will at the moment of impact.

I agree.

One of the interesting things I learned about while learning to fly is the "perception-reality delay." Everyone's is different. Recognizing the delay in your perception of reality can save your life in high speed flight as it can prevent pilot-induced -oscillations (PIOs). No better example was a sober test pilot at the controls of an F-4 going Mach II on a low level pass on the test range. The pilot started making pitch inputs to the plane but was about a half second behind the jet. Within seconds, a perfectly good airplane disintegrated, killing the pilot. That stuck in my head forever after.

Sober, people have naturally differing reaction times. My father had a very short reaction time and I must owe mine to him. Other people see a second or more between witnessing an action and actually realizing it happened. We all live in a delayed reality.

Alcohol naturally extends that delay by a huge amount. That is why drunks drive full speed into stopped vehicles or head-on into oncoming traffic. Their perception is so dulled and delayed that they never feel the impact until long after it has happened.

Perhaps this is why they survive. They have always "bounced" before the pain gets to them. Alcohol dulls pain so perhaps that further insulates them from the physical trauma underway during the impact.

Things that make you go "Hmmmm?"

 

[Bulldog777]

They have the same tools for detecting it just as they do for the other stuff.

I would be more concern with the opiod abuse than the legalization of weed at this point.

Weed is known as the"gateway drug" to illicit drugs. You legalize weed today, they'll want coke legalized tomorrow. Legalizing weed is going to end bad. We have only begun to see the ramifications.

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[bearbait]

Weed is known as the"gateway drug" to illicit drugs. You legalize weed today, they'll want coke legalized tomorrow. Legalizing weed is going to end bad. We have only begun to see the ramifications.

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I tend to agree with in some respects however not all. I suffered with colitis for years and my last resort before getting an ileostomy was to try medical marijuana. Well it helped with the pain however did nothing for the inflammation. I was going to the veterans office where they tried their best to help me with the medical marijuana. While there I saw first hand just how much it helped our men and women which helped me see that it's not always black or white but there is a gray area in between. I'm gonna be 62 in a couple weeks and it just wasn't the way I wanted to spend the rest of my life. Now when I was younger in my 20's I would give it a try mostly because I had a couple drinks in me, still not my thing. What I did notice is that if we went to a party where most people smoked dope there was never an argument or a fight however at a party where a lot of people were drinking you could almost count on someone getting out of hand, again when I was younger. A lot of pain and suffering has been caused by both, not necessarily the weed smokers but the people who went on to the harder drugs who would sell their soul for their next fix a lot like an alcoholic. As humans a lot of us just don't know when to say enough is enough. An example....a couple weeks ago there was a chace the ace near buy where the price got up to 1.2 million. A lady and her nephew bought the winning ticket but after they won the aunt said she payed for the ticket and he deserved nothing even though both names are on the ticket, 6 hundred thousand each, just when is enough enough. As for the making weed legal well that remains to be seen. Personally I'm against it but then again I'm getting old and not big on change. I do believe it's time to start teaching our kids about moderation and start taking them fishing, hunting and camping, show them the beauty nature has to offer instead alcohol and drugs. Ok, now that's my long winded rant, as you were.

 

[Henro]

Alcohol affects the ability to drive the most, and marijuana has the lowest level of danger. In addition, the researchers found that men are significantly less likely to have a serious accident while under the influence of alcohol or drugs than women.

Wow, last response to this thread was four years ago! Must have struck a nerve.

 

[William1]

OTT has recently had a rash of new members, bringing threads up from the dead with somewhat generic comments. All spammers. I'm sure @North Idaho Wolfman sees and spam bans them

 

[lugbolt]

legalization is nothing but a money grab for certain people including the state government as a whole.

Here they key saying how much money 'it' brought in within the last year (medical only is legal here). But what they don't tell you is how much it 'cost' the state. You never hear that. Ever, well unless they're building a park or a road, then they overinflate the numbers for the news people to make the state government look 'good'.

but what they don't tell you is that if you have any in the vehicle along with a ccl weapon, you are now in simultaneous possession of a controlled substance and firearms which is a felony.

Also if you are on government assistance and you go to the dr for blood work, and they find thc in your system, they can cut your benefits. Discretion is the key here which begs the question, what if you make your doctor or nurse mad somehow?

not all banks will deal with money from legal growers, another stumbling block. Even legitimate businesses that grow (legally) sometimes have a hard time finding a bank to handle their money--and there is a LOT of it that transacts. In and out.

As usual there is a whole lot more to medical and recreational pot than what's on the surface, and I've only just barely scratched that surface. I've been following this quite a bit and based on what I have learned, the only people that benefit are the government and those that the government allows to grow it, sometimes those are one in the same as the grower(s) might be family of senator or whatever. You get the idea. Follow the money.

Paid a visit to a lady friend last year in colorado. She lives and works on a ski resort. Nice place. But not that nice. Everywhere you go, you can't get away from the stench of pot smoke. And I mean everywhere I went! That in itself was a stark reminder of what recreational pot can do and I am personally against it for that reason alone. I will not go back out there. Period.

I had an ex-girlfriend who was a pot head. She was stunningly beautiful, a model, but loved her cigarettes, her alcohol, and her weed. The former two are easily obtained the latter not so much because she got it illegally. She made pretty good money at the time and spent a large percentage of her paycheck on "stuff" every friday afternoon when she got off work. I asked her once if she had anything saved for retirement. nope not a dime, can't afford it. She got pissy when I told her if she'd quit the booze and stuff that she could retire a millionaire. Those people don't listen. You can't tell 'em anything. That woman was trouble from the word go, of which almost did me in. Glad I ain't got no part of it anymore. That 30 minutes of 'fun' every day or two wasn't worth the risk.

 

[jyoutz]

Right now the only roadside test for weed is a subjective evaluation by the LEO. Unfortunately, the process is flawed and there are many cases of false positives. In one case an accident victim was arrested for impaired driving when the accident was actually caused by the stroke he was having. Treatment was delayed for hours while he was in custody. In another case the driver suffered a head injury as a result of the accident, the symptoms of which led the officer to believe the driver was impaired. Again, the driver was incarcerated instead of hospitalized.

There's going to be a lot of problems caused by this legislation. They didn't think it through and don't have measures in place to deal with the problems. In other words: Just like any government project.

Government project? In most states where pot is legal, the voters initiated the legalization.

 

[jyoutz]

There is substantial documentation that certain compounds ("cannabinoids") in marijuana have medical value. EG: CBD is an effective treatment for certain types of epilepsy.

However, what other prescription comes with dosage determined by the patient, in an unrefined form and is administered by smoking? Can you imagine a doctor prescribing, say, poppy plants for pain relief or tobacco for vitamin B? Much (most?) of the "medical use" today is just bunk: a smokescreen for recreational use. If it was a real medical application, 9 times out of 10 it could be separated from the psychoactive compound (THC)

The biggest problem with the criminalization of marijuana is the impairment of research into any possible medical uses. Even heroin has a legitimate and well documented medical application and it is widely acknowledged to be a far more dangerous drug than THC. So maybe the benefit of the Canadian experiment will be to expedite honest, independent, controlled research into the legitimate medical applications of the various cannabinoids.

I don’t use drugs, but it seems like much of the products sold in the legal stores are edible products, not for smoking. And I have seen these: the are actually labeled by piece with the amount of THC.

 

[torch]

Since this old thread has been resurected: 4 years later and we still don't have a reliable answer to Skeets' original concerns. There is a device ( Drager DrugTest 5000 ) but it is notoriously unreliable especially in cold weather, and there is still no legal definition of how high is too high anyway or means to establish how long ago the subject was exposed.

In the absence of a smoking joint (sorry, couldn't resist) often the only measure of pot impairment for drivers at the side of the road is a field sobriety test. If a driver fails either the device or FST, they are taken to the station for more extensive -- but still subjective -- tests.

Unfortunately, drivers with head injuries may also fail; this has led to several cases of innocent (as shown by eventual blood test results) but injured drivers being taken into custody instead of to hospital. In at least one case, the person suffered permanent disability attributed to the overnight delay without treatment for the brain injury.

 

[torch]

Government project? In most states where pot is legal, the voters initiated the legalization.

Canada is not a state ;-)

Things are a little different up here. While there is no question that the government's legislation was influenced, perhaps even driven, by lobbyists, we don't have the same mechanisms to force a proposition to be added to the ballot as happens in many US states.

Besides, have you seen our Prime Minister? I suspect the decision to decriminalize marijuana use may have had a personal motivation... <lol>

 

[skeets]

A 4 year old post and I have not changed my mind,, and yes my friend I have read and seen your PM,,, he is about on the same page as out POTSU, and thats not saying much,,, we as a people and I mean all people are in serious trouble