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Smoking weed and getting behind the wheel is *almost* never a good idea. Impaired driving puts yourself at risk but more importantly, it puts everyone else on the road in danger when you could’ve just not gotten in the car. I put some emphasis on *almost* up there because I’ve found the one time it is good to get high and drive.
The University of California San Diego is running a study to test how THC and cannabis affect driving performance, and they’ll be paying participants to get high and drive. One of the things they’ll be studying is how soon a person can safely drive after smoking cannabis.
Researchers are recruiting 180 people for the study, which will consist of having participants smoke varying amounts of marijuana or a placebo and then participate in driving simulations and cognitive tests. Participants will be monitored for 5 to 6 hours after smoking and will be tested about every hour-and-a-half, plus have blood, saliva, and breath samples taken at regular intervals.
“We are not only looking at how impaired a driver is at different levels of smoking, but also how long that impairment lasts,” says Tom Marcotte, co-director of the UCSD’s Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, which is conducting the study. (via)
All of this is to determine the safe amount of THC a person can have in his or her system before driving. With alcohol, we know the exact Blood Alcohol Content that becomes dangerous for a driver and after .08 you’ll get a DUI. But with cannabis and THC, it’s unclear and a lot more testing needs to be done in order to create a baseline.
Researchers already have 100 participants in this study but are looking for 80 more, and you can apply HERE on Survey Monkey if you think you’d be a good fit for this.