By Joseph Frescott, Sports Editor
Marijuana has been at the forefront of conversation in the U.S. for the last decade, as Colorado and Washington became the first to legalize the drug for recreational use in 2012.
With many states following suit, New York became the 15th state to do so in 2021 and is seen by many as one of the major contributors to the industry’s already $13.2 billion market in the U.S. alone.
The widespread legalization and acceptance of the drug have not come without their fair share of concerns, however, as issues such as increases in underage use and other societal effects have been reported.
Although these matters are essential, initial reports from states who have legalized cannabis indicate another unforeseen impact that could affect not only the 16 percent of Americans that smoke marijuana but the entire country.
It is no secret that driving while impaired remains a significant issue in the U.S., as despite the increase in rideshare companies such as UBER, driving while under the influence (DUI) accounts for 35 percent of all fatal motor vehicle accidents across the country.
According to the Department of Transportation, there was a 10.5 percent increase in accident-related deaths in 2021 compared to the previous year, with an estimated 42,915 people falling victim.
With deaths on the rise, the initial findings regarding the recreational use of marijuana and its effects on crash rates indicate that the drug’s recreational legalization has led to increased crash rates that result in injury and death.
Researchers at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety concluded in their 2022 study that the “legalization of the recreational use of marijuana was associated with a 6.5 percent increase in injury crash rates and a 2.3 percent increase in fatal crash rates.”
It is statistics like these that make individuals like Ellen Willmott hesitant about the legalization of cannabis.
“Hearing about the change in the laws is that I’m agnostic in some ways, and not that I think that you should never be impaired and it shouldn’t be just marijuana. I mean, you shouldn’t be impaired on prescription drugs, You shouldn’t be impaired on alcohol,” the former interim chief executive officer (CEO) for Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) said. “You should not get behind the wheel of what is essentially a two-ton killing machine in the wrong hands. Because if you have any kind of impairment that slows your reaction times, that skews perspectives, that create any kind of impediment for you to be a responsible user of the roads or waterways.”
Ellen Willmott served as the interim CEO for two years until January 2023, when she took another position as general counsel for Doctors Without Borders.
During her time leading the organization, she helped MADD make tremendous strides in their fight against drinking and driving, with their most notable being their influence on President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill signed on Nov. 15, 2021.
With billions allocated to public transit, renewable energy, and more, the bill included $17 billion for road safety, with a mandate that MADD had been campaigning for years. This mandate was a requirement for all automakers to install an anti-drunk driving system for all new cars by 2026, marking a tremendous milestone for the organization.
Willmott clarifies the purpose of this mandate.
“The goal is to detect impairment to ensure that the driver is brought safely to the side of the road and does not create or cause injuries or deaths by impaired driving mistakes or accidents,” she said. “Actually, we don’t use the word accidents at MADD, use the word crash. Because alcohol, at least it’s a decision to drink and drive. It’s not an accident. If you drink, don’t drive.”
There are two systems that are currently being experimented with when it comes to detecting impaired driving. The first, which is required by all new cars in the European Union starting this July, is a driving monitoring and assistance system (DMAS) which uses cameras to monitor an individual’s driving, having the capacity to emergency brake if needed. The other, which is still being assessed, would test a driver’s blood alcohol content before they are allowed to start their vehicle.
While technology such as the DMAS is still being developed, as MADD states in their 2019 Cannabis Report, “law enforcement officers are our best allies in the effort to reduce drugged driving and are the heroes who make our roads safe.”
The legalization of marijuana has only complicated things further for law enforcement, as there are currently no tests to determine when a person last smoked, and how impaired the individual is.
This only makes the need for systems such as DMAS even more apparent, as these technologies have the capability to detect the common effects that marijuana has on drivers. According to the CDC, driving under the influence of marijuana leads to “slower reaction times, impaired coordination, and distorted perception,” all of which are detrimental to one’s ability to operate a motor vehicle effectively.
With that being said, there are still many questions regarding marijuana, its effect on driving, and how it can be enforced. In the meantime, Willmott thinks people need to take personal responsibility.
“I think that ensuring that parents are having the conversations that they need to have, open and honest conversations with their kids, I think that’s really important. I think that creating a culture of and I’m not a prohibitionist in any way, shape, or form, but creating a culture where you take personal responsibility so that if I choose on a Friday night to go out to dinner with my friends and have a glass of wine at dinner, I Uber home. It doesn’t matter if I have one drink or twenty,” she said. “I think working and partnering with the alcohol industry to ensure that appropriate messaging about alcohol, maybe we do the same with the cannabis industry to ensure that the marketing of products comes with a reminder that it’s not drinking responsibly or smoking responsibly. It is if you smoke [or drink], don’t get behind the wheel of a car.”
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