Alcohol Companies Calling for Draconian Police State Measures to Combat Driving on WEED

 The Governor’s Highway Safety Association calls itself “The States Voice on Highway Safety”  and holds annual training meetings to indoctrinate law enforcement  agencies all across the country. 

However, the GHSA should genuinely call  itself “The Alcohol Industry’s Voice,” as its latest report is  entirely funded by the alcohol industry in a blatant attempt to paint  cannabis users as the real highway villains. GHSA’s report was funded completely by the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibly (www.responsibility.org) and is titled “Drug-Impaired Driving: Marijuana and Opioids Raise Critical Issues for States.”  

The report was quickly broadcast across mainstream media outlets who  are also largely funded by the alcohol industry’s advertisements.  Curiously absent from the media coverage though was the fact the report was entirely paid for by Responsibility.org. 

 GHSA’s report pins the blame for impaired driving deaths on cannabis  and opioids. Listed in the report are a number of disturbing  encouragements to law enforcement agencies:  

1. Advanced Roadside Impaired Driving Enforcement (ARIDE) for a “majority” of police officers
2. Implementation of “oral fluid devices” to test for drugs
3. Increasing the number of Drug Recognition Experts (DRE’s)
4. Training of judges and prosecutors to enforce Driving Under the Influence of Drugs (DUID) laws
5. Train officers to investigate drug impairment even when alcohol is suspected in DUI cases
6. Authorize electronic search warrants for drug tests
7. Penalize people when they refuse drug tests
8. Require blood testing for drugs
9. Establishment of DUID laws equivalent to DUI laws
10. Drug-testing fatally injured drivers as well as any and all surviving drivers where a fatality has occurred

Nearly all of the “recommendations,” if implemented, will lead to increased mass incarceration of the U.S. populace, which already has the largest prison population  in the world. 

The recommendations could lead to more completely  innocent and unimpaired drivers being jailed by, as The Free Thought  Project has reported on numerous occasions, so-called Drug Recognition  Experts. The costs of more DUIs will only enrich lawyers, drug-testing  programs, probation companies, and vehicle-installed DUI device  corporations. 

Additionally, research indicates that THC tests of  saliva and THC-blood levels are no indication of impairment and can  remain in a person’s system for up to 30 days following consumption. 

While the GHSA’s report appears to be concerned with “highway safety,” it relies on highly subjective and unreliable data to arrive at its conclusions and subsequent recommendations. Many Emergency Room doctors or nurses can testify that it is often  the drunk driver who survives an accident whereby other drivers are  killed. 

However, such qualitative data is absent from GHSA’s data  analysis, which used the National Highway Transportation Safety  Administration (NHTSA) stats from 2006, 2015, and 2016 to arrive at its  conclusion that more drivers who die in accidents were on drugs than  alcohol. GHSA reported: 

In 2016, 43.6% of the drivers with known drug test  results were drug-positive. In 2015, of the drivers with known test  results, 43.0% in the annual report le and 43.4% in the nal le were  drug-positive. Of the drivers with known alcohol test results, 37.9% were  alcohol-positive (any alcohol at all) in 2016 compared to 38.0% in the  2015 annual report le and 38.1% in the nal le.

Wow! Isn’t that a convenient statistic? The alcohol industry paid for  a report that appears to show drugged drivers were more likely to die  in accidents than alcohol-impaired drivers. All of which should come as  no surprise to those who funded the report. Fortunately, as TFTP has reported, these myths have already been debunked by researchers who are not being paid by Big Alcohol: 

Citing the National Highway Traffic Safety Association,  Forbes reported that not only is marijuana use safer than alcohol use  when it comes to driving, but far fewer fatalities are recorded when  marijuana is present than when alcohol is present in traffic fatality  instances. “It looks like marijuana’s impact on traffic safety has been  greatly exaggerated,” writes Forbes.

Research from the American Automobile Association (AAA) has also shown that no scientific basis  exists to legitimize current THC testing because a blood test threshold  for THC—the chemical component of cannabis that makes people ‘high’—is  not scientifically possible: 

Those tests employ a blood level-based judgment similar  to that used for determining alcohol impairment. But AAA found such  tests for THC are wholly unreliable—sending potentially unimpaired  drivers to jail and putting impaired drivers back behind the wheel. There is understandably a strong desire by both lawmakers and the  public to create legal limits for marijuana impairment in the same  manner we do alcohol,” said AAA president and CEO, Marshall Doney, as  reported by the Associated Press. “In the case of marijuana this  approach is flawed and not supported by scientific research.”

Not only does it appear that the GHSA’s statistics are flawed, but it  is also clear that they do not align with other non-biased  organizations’ conclusions. 

However, one of the most disturbing issues  that have been revealed by this report is the fact that the alcohol  industry is training law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and lawyers  on how to detect, charge, litigate, and prosecute cannabis users in the  judicial system. 

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