{"id":8157,"date":"2018-03-25T13:41:18","date_gmt":"2018-03-25T13:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/?p=2989249"},"modified":"2018-03-25T13:41:18","modified_gmt":"2018-03-25T13:41:18","slug":"as-colorado-auto-deaths-involving-marijuana-rise-cdot-is-asking-thousands-how-they-feel-about-driving-under-pots-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/as-colorado-auto-deaths-involving-marijuana-rise-cdot-is-asking-thousands-how-they-feel-about-driving-under-pots-influence\/","title":{"rendered":"As Colorado auto deaths involving marijuana rise, CDOT is asking thousands how they feel about driving under pot\u2019s influence"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0 5px 5px;float:right;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/as-colorado-auto-deaths-involving-marijuana-rise-cdot-is-asking-thousands-how-they-feel-about-driving-under-pots-influence\/\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><p>Amid a rise in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/2017\/08\/25\/colorado-marijuana-traffic-fatalities\/\">Colorado auto fatalities involving marijuana<\/a>, state transportation officials are surveying thousands of residents this year to better understand public attitudes toward driving under the influence of pot, with the hopes of blunting the increasingly deadly trend.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.codot.gov\/safety\/alcohol-and-impaired-driving\/druggeddriving\">Cannabis Conversation<\/a>, a campaign led by the Colorado Department of Transportation, law enforcement and the marijuana industry, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/2018\/02\/09\/colorado-driving-while-stoned\/\">launched this year<\/a>.\u00a0It held its first open house in the metro area Wednesday at Denver\u2019s Montclair Recreation Center, and there will be more meetings in Fort Collins, Pueblo and Denver in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n<p>The number of marijuana-related automobile fatalities in Colorado, as measured by the drug\u2019s chief psychoactive ingredient, hit 77 in 2016, the latest in a series of sharp increases in recent years. Fifty-one of those drivers had levels of that substance, called Delta 9 THC, above the threshold for cannabis impairment under Colorado law.<\/p>\n<p>And according to a survey done by CDOT last year, just over half of marijuana users said they had gotten behind the wheel of a vehicle in the last 30 days within two hours of using the drug. That percentage was little changed from the response to the same question a year earlier.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s really troubling to us,\u201d CDOT communications manager Sam Cole\u00a0told an audience gathered at a Lowry neighborhood recreation center last week.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re a little frustrated we\u2019re not moving the needle on driver behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>People at the meeting\u00a0were asked\u00a0to share their thoughts on driving under pot\u2019s influence by using whiteboards and computer questionnaires and even by dropping stones into mason jars corresponding to certain questions about marijuana and vehicular use.<\/p>\n<p>In the campaign\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/sgiz.mobi\/s3\/CannabisConversation\">online component<\/a>, a survey has already yielded 10,000 responses, according to CDOT \u2014 data that will be assembled, unwrapped and analyzed this summer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe want to better understand why some users of marijuana don\u2019t take the dangers of driving more seriously \u2014 and what we could say to make them change their minds,\u201d said Cole in an interview with The Denver Post.\u00a0\u201cWe want to get into the heads of marijuana users.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Marijuana-related automobile fatalities still lag significantly behind alcohol-related fatalities \u2014 8 percent versus 26 percent, respectively, of the state\u2019s 608 total road fatalities in 2016 \u2014 but Glenn Davis, CDOT\u2019s highway safety manager, isn\u2019t resting easy.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"related right\" \/>\n<p>\u201cWe want to work with the marijuana industry so we don\u2019t have numbers like we have with alcohol,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to work to get ahead of this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kristi Kelly, executive director of the Marijuana Industry Group, said the conversation around marijuana impairment is a nuanced one. Unlike driving under the influence of alcohol, which can be precisely measured in a person\u2019s blood alcohol content, cannabis impairment <a href=\"https:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/2017\/08\/25\/marijuana-impairment-testing\/\">is not as easy to determine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Detection of Delta 9 THC in someone\u2019s system \u201cis an indication of recent use, but it\u2019s not necessarily correlated to impairment,\u201d Kelly said. Different cannabis users, depending on their history with pot and their tolerance of its effects, could show the presence of the drug\u2019s psychoactive ingredient without actually being high.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCannabis consumption does not equate to impairment, but it can,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n<p>She likes the fact that the state is now using the more precise measurement of THC in a driver\u2019s blood, but admits \u201cwe still have work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That work should include a dogged effort to get accident victims\u00a0out in front of people telling their stories about how they were injured or a loved one was killed by someone who was high behind the wheel, said Candace Lightner, president and founder of We Save Lives.<\/p>\n<p>The Arlington, Va.-based group, which fights drunk, drugged and distracted driving, recently launched a petition <a href=\"http:\/\/wesavelives.org\/campaigns\/driving-high-means-dui\/\">on its website<\/a>\u00a0asking federal officials to get the word out on the \u201cdangers of\u00a0marijuana-impaired driving and provide more tools for law enforcement to prevent additional drugged driving tragedies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere absolutely is a difference in awareness between drugged driving \u2014 especially with prescription drugs \u2014 and drunk driving,\u201d said Lightner, who founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving nearly 40 years ago. \u201cWe need to put a face to drugged driving.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Just last week,\u00a0Colorado State University <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jsad.com\/doi\/abs\/10.15288\/jsad.2018.79.277\">released a study<\/a> showing that recent high school graduates were less resistant to the notion of riding in a vehicle driven by someone high on weed (23 percent of respondents said they had done so at least once) versus an alcohol-impaired driver (20 percent).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve put a lot of emphasis on drinking and driving but less effort on driving under the influence of marijuana,\u201d Kaigang Li, an assistant professor in the CSU Department of Health and Exercise Science, said in a statement accompanying the study\u2019s release. \u201cMaybe we need more of the latter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a story published last summer, The Post reported that the number of drivers involved in fatal crashes in Colorado who tested positive for marijuana rose sharply each year from 2013-16. The drug was legalized for recreation use in 2012.<\/p>\n<p>But testing methods and toxicology analysis hadn\u2019t been consistent among coroners in the state, injecting some uncertainty into published statistics. CDOT\u2019s Davis said starting in 2016, coroners and law enforcement officials began to coordinate more closely on measuring the presence of cannabis following a collision and specifically focusing on the Delta 9 component in a user\u2019s blood.<\/p>\n<p>That should allow more of an apples-to-apples, year-over-year comparison going forward, he said, and provide better guidance in coming up with the best strategies to combat drugged driving.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe do have better data than in the past,\u201d Davis said. \u201cThere\u2019s more uniformity than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amid a rise in Colorado auto fatalities involving marijuana, state transportation officials are surveying thousands of residents this year to better understand public attitudes toward driving under the influence of pot, with the hopes of blunting the increasingly deadly trend. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1986,6811,6857,6897,7127,6812,1345,7087,7279,6813,77,6999,6886,9,5019,441,1,3,7508,61,1736],"tags":[4554,6816,6859,6898,7130,6817,3915,7088,7282,6818,2655,7000,6889,5022,3015,7510],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}