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 In the quarter-century since High Times magazine proclaimed April 20
a time to light up and smoke marijuana, traffic fatalities have
spiked 12 percent on that date, compared to one week before or
after, a new study shows.
“This was such a great natural experiment to examine the risk of
cannabis intoxication,” said lead author Dr. John Staples, an
internist and researcher at the University of British Columbia in
Vancouver.
Though the study could not assess whether marijuana-intoxicated
drivers caused the surge in vehicle deaths on the counter-cultural
“High Holiday” dubbed “4/20,” they appear to be the most likely
culprits, Staples said in a phone interview.
“The simplest explanation is that some drivers are impaired by
cannabis use, and these drivers are contributing to fatal crashes,”
he said. “There should be very clear messaging to the public: don’t
drive high.”
The impact of marijuana’s psychoactive effects on drivers is of
particular concern given that six U.S. states now permit marijuana
to be sold for recreational use to customers at least 21 years old.
Since High Times popularized the date in a story the magazine
published in 1991, thousands of Americans have been celebrating the
intoxicating properties of cannabis on April 20, the authors write
in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Five San Rafael High School students claim to have coined the term
“4/20” after regularly meeting at 4:20 p.m. in 1971 to search for a
patch of pot plants in a nearby forest.
Staples and Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier analyzed U.S. National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration fatality reports from 1992, the year
after the High Times story, through 2016. Traffic fatalities were 12
percent more likely on April 20 after 4:20 p.m., the time the
celebrations begin, than on the same day one week before or one week
after, the study found.
Fallout from the festivities could be even deadlier for youth. Fatal
crashes were 38 percent more likely for drivers under 21 years old
after 4:20 p.m. on April 20 than they were the week before or after,
Staples said.
The increased risk of fatal traffic crashes on April 20 was
comparable in magnitude to the increased traffic risks observed on
Super Bowl Sunday, the authors write. Redelmeier, a professor of
medicine at the University of Toronto, previously studied a spike in
traffic fatalities on Super Bowl Sunday.
All U.S. states prohibit driving impaired by marijuana, said
Jennifer Whitehill, a professor of health promotion and policy at
the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who was not involved with
the study. Organizers of 4/20 festivals should promote safe-driving
measures, she said by email.
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In Colorado, where marijuana is legal, Lyft, the ride-sharing
service, last year launched a fleet of green cars wrapped with the
message: "Plan a ride before you're high."
Jolene Forman, an attorney with Drug Policy Alliance, a New York
nonprofit working to reduce the harms of both drug use and
prohibition, said factors other than 4/20 celebrations might
contribute to the increase in fatal crash rates. White supremacist
groups, for example, also gather on April 20 to mark Adolf Hitler’s
birthday.
Nevertheless, Forman, who was not involved with the study, credited
the report with creating “the opportunity to take a deeper dive into
the research on marijuana and road safety to truly understand
whether there is a link between marijuana use and crash risk, and
the extent of that risk.”
Previous research has shown that opioid-overdose deaths and
hospitalizations drop in states that legalized marijuana, she said
by email.
Legalization “provides an opportunity to shift our mindset away from
prohibition and, instead, toward treating marijuana as a public
health issue,” Forman said. “By treating marijuana as a public
health issue, we can include marijuana in a comprehensive
conversation about impaired and distracted driving, including the
effects of prescription drugs, alcohol, texting, fatigue, etcetera
on driving.”
Whitehill agreed that the study highlights numerous questions that
remain to be answered about marijuana and driving.
“For policymakers implementing marijuana legalization, it is
critical to invest in research that will help us understand the
impact the policy change may have on traffic safety,” she wrote.
Whitehill also urged parents to discuss the dangers of impaired
driving from all psychoactive substances, including marijuana. “As
marijuana becomes legal in more states,” she said, “this type of
conversation will become more necessary and, hopefully, more common
as well.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2EcM1zO JAMA Internal Medicine, online
February 12, 2018.
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