I think they are plenty of good arguments for legalizing marijuana - however, things like this tend to make me think twice about it:
"In California alone, nearly 1,000 deaths and injuries each year are blamed directly on drugged drivers, according to CHP data, and law enforcement puts much of the blame on the rapid growth of medical marijuana use in the last decade. Fatalities in crashes where drugs were the primary cause and alcohol was not involved jumped 55% over the 10 years ending in 2009.”
That number is meaningless unless we know what counts as "injuries".
Furthermore "drugged driving" is anytime someone is in an accident and blood tests show evidence of Marijuana use, even in cases where the driver was no longer impaired.
>Fatalities in crashes where drugs were the primary cause and alcohol was not involved jumped 55% over the 10 years ending in 2009.
How often were they testing for Marijuana after car accidents in 1999 compared to 2009, and what level of impairment is the cutoff for a "primary cause."
That statistic is useless without knowing if an increased number of "drugged driving" offenses was offset by a corresponding decreased number of alcohol impaired offenses.
If alcohol testing were like marijuana testing, almost every accident would be counted as a DUI.
Because of the underlying chemistry involved, most statistics involving marijuana-related incidents vastly overstate instances of drugged driving, use, etc. This includes not just DUIs, but also numbers like the DAWN reports.
Unlike almost any other drug, marijuana stays detectable in the system for 2 weeks on a test (for urine tests, which are the most common - in general, anywhere from 2 days to 3 months, depending on the type of test + usage habits).
Since the effects of the drug only last for ~2-4 hours, that means that "testing positive" for marijuana is useless at indicating whether the person is actually under the influence, or just happened to use the drug at some point within the last two weeks.
Contrast to most drugs - alcohol, for example, can only be detected for about as long as the person is impaired.
> law enforcement puts much of the blame on the
> rapid growth of medical marijuana use in the last
> decade
I would say that law enforcement isn't necessarily unbiased here. It comes across to me like asking the RIAA about how piracy affects them and then being concerned when they claim that they are loosing $1-billion every minute due to piracy.
If you're worried about DUIs, then do you want alcohol production/possession criminialized?
Where is the comparison with alcohol and other legal drug-related automobile accidents? I think it's safe to say stoned driving is a -lot- less dangerous than drunk driving, and let's not even discuss driving on legal pharmaceutical painkillers - which more people are addicted to than heroin, cocaine and meth combined.
"In California alone, nearly 1,000 deaths and injuries each year are blamed directly on drugged drivers, according to CHP data, and law enforcement puts much of the blame on the rapid growth of medical marijuana use in the last decade. Fatalities in crashes where drugs were the primary cause and alcohol was not involved jumped 55% over the 10 years ending in 2009.”
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/02/nation/la-na-pot-dri...