Posted by bookofjoe 12/20/2025
That being the case, I'm not sure what the policy prescription should be here, if any.
The statistics for this seem suspect at best, I'll believe it once it's peer reviewed
I'm not sure how THC intoxication could be measured, but blood THC concentration feels like an incredibly crude metric compared to BAC.
50% of the people on this street get stoned before driving to work, every single day
dope isn't even legal here and even if it was DUI is wildly illegal
We can only cure this if we get serious about penalties because we can't undo murder and injuries
How about first time warning, second time weekend in jail, third time week in jail, fourth time month in jail, fifth time year in prison
Saying that in the country with world-leading mass incarceration mostly due to its decades long “war on drugs” which has very much not cured drug problems is a perfect example of putting ideological preconceptions ahead of reality.
I wish I could emphasize this even more.
There are some situations where certain types of punishments in certain situations will achieve societal behavior change.
There's a lot more where it doesn't and people absolutely to apply any kind of scientific thought to it.
> There's a lot more where it doesn't
Or, at least, not the behavior change you are hoping for.
The people who try anyway, mostly put the USA as fairly middling, nothing special either way.
That's what happens when you use criminalization and penal slavery to replace chattel slavery.
Conservatives love to deny this, but it doesn't make it false. That criminalization was an immediate, direct substitute for chattel slavery is extensively documented, and that the patterns of criminalization used for that purpose became culturally entrenched and spread (even where the particular practices on top of that served to make it a replacement for chattel slavery, like convict leasing, generally did not in their original form beyond the South, though commercial exploitation of coerced prison labor did become a widespread national phenomenon, even though there has been some winding back in some jurisdictions of that particular practice in recent years.)
Somehow every part of this paragraph just keeps getting less correct.
America doesn't have "world-leading" criminality by literally any metric you care to choose.
Even if it did, also having world leading incarceration rates might make a rational, scientific type fellow wonder about how those could both be true!
Also, those are not in fact the only alternatives. It's not even difficult to think of more than those two. Have you even tried?
that's why I proposed five steps starting with warning, weekend, then week in jail
if you spend a weekend in jail and don't change your behavior from doing something wildly dangerous yet absolutely not addicting, well then proceed to a year in prison
note I am not saying put people in prison simply for smoking dope, it's not legal here but there are no serious penalties if caught
I don't care what people do in their homes
You drive on the road stoned when I am riding my bike or running and put my life in danger, you definitely deserve some time to think about it behind bars
I've been "grazed" on the road many time over the years, I have no idea if people are drunk or stoned or just looking at their phones but I am okay with my five step idea for ALL of those cases, but they will never be caught anyway until they murder someone and then it's too late
Whats more, police officers already have a wide authority of judgement when considering these factors around marijuana impairment currently. Relying on subjective evaluation from FST and physical presentation will only result in a higher rate of non impaired drivers being imprisoned.
https://www.courts.wa.gov/subsite/mjc/docs/2024/Three-strike...
Those laws exist, and often result in people who should be receiving treatment spending years of their life in prison.
Someone who gets 5+ DUIs isn’t likely to be deterred by schemes like this
Averages do not work that way! The average of 48, 48, 48, 3 and 3 is 30. The study findings remain interesting but the actual proportion of impaired drivers may be less than 40%.
https://www.trafficsafetymarketing.gov/safety-topics/seat-be...
He says that he gets cars in that reek so bad, he can smell them from three bays away.
I suspect that we'll soon be seeing a rapid "pullover-test," and that will probably knock that stuff down.
Interesting questions: * What is the baseline of consumption / THC level?
* what was the alcohol level in decesased drivers ? (e..g how many people only had alcohol, how many only THC, how many had both, how many had nothing.
* Are there other test scenarios where THC screening is mandatory that could help getting to the baseline ? Are there ways to get an approximate answer from sewers, like they did for Covid?
This paper would need to go into way more detail to be at all useful.
40% is a staggering number, which makes me suspect that all it measures is Montgomery County police's pretty good track record for deciding when to test someone for THC during an autopsy