“You’re not awake,” Guy said.
“I’m sober because you’ll see me in a week or two.”
“Well,” laughed Guy, “it’s all relative.”
For many subjects, their motives for participating in the trial were not merely to save sane people from needless arrest. It is to demonstrate that experienced potters are safe on the road and should only be arrested if an external measure such as the Cognivue test shows they are impaired, no matter how long they last smoked. In a word, a lot of test participants say they drive high.
“I purposefully went uphill to drive on a mountain highway,” said a woman wearing a Deadpool shirt. “So beautiful and scenic!”
“Honestly, it makes me drive more carefully,” said another woman. “I drive slower.”
This is a common belief among everyday cannabis users – that driving a stoned vehicle is just as safe as driving sober, if not safer. Research shows that experienced users often overcompensate for cognitive decline with greater caution and focus. Accordingly, some study subjects thought they did best on a Cognivue test taken right after they vaped — because they were “zoned out” as one woman described.
“I’m looking forward to them seeing everyone’s scores improve,” one heavyweight told me. “Get that data to Congress!”
Drug recognition experts find this confidence alarming. Research from the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that even after high ends, as long as there is THC in someone’s system, that person is still double accident. For people who use cannabis daily, that means that even if they stop smoking, their psychomotor abilities can be impaired for up to three weeks.
“Even though you feel fine, there are physiological things you can’t control,” a DRE named John told one study subject.
“But I’ve been driving for years,” objected subject, stating that he knew how to handle roads when stones were thrown. His eyes are bloodshot, but he insists he’ll be fine behind the wheel. John asked him to extend his arm and then touch his nose, one hand at a time. The subject remembers the nose. John asked him to walk in a straight line, and the guy wobbled, saying, “Wow, a little shaky on that road!”
Then, after the topic was gone, John told me he didn’t even know where to start with people like this. “After decades of education, everyone knows that drunk driving is dangerous, but 40 per cent of smokers say it doesn’t affect their driving,” he said. “How do you fight against half the people?”
Similarly, many of the study participants thought that driving with a stone in Colorado was unlikely to cause an accident or arrest. “The police here are very good!” many people told me. “They’re cold with weeds.” A white girl with short red hair said she was once pulled over while smoking, and the police let her go. A white man wearing clear-rimmed glasses said he was once pulled over immediately after hitting a hot box in his car, and even though the officer gave him a speeding ticket , but his only reaction to the smell of the pot was to say that next time he should wait four hours before driving. A friend of his, he continued, once dozed off at a stop sign with a bubble in the passenger seat; When he woke up, a policeman was gently suggesting that he walk home. Many whites, Asians, and light-skinned Latinos at the clinical trial had stories like this.
