How to Use Cannabis Responsibly and Safely The Experience of Getting High
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Libération (France), 2005-10-03 (Mon) Drugs behind the wheel: the govt. embarrassed by a study comparing the danger of cannabis to alcohol by Matthieu Ecoiffier
[translated from the French]
It's a slap to the government and its majority.
The conclusions of the first epidemiological
study on the link between use of drugs and
traffic accidents, about which Liberation has
learned, have been provoking for some weeks the
greatest embarrassment in high places. The
dangers of cannabis behind the wheel, while quite
real, are much less than those of alcohol.
According to our sources, this study, known as
SAM (securite routiere et accidents mortels),
confirms at the outset the overwhelming role of
alcohol in driving accidents. On the other hand,
the risk of being responsible for a fatal
accident under cannabis alone is weak, though not
zero. The risk isn't in any case worse than that
of a driver with between 0.02 and 0.05 blood
alcohol content [(BAC) [ Note: 0.08 is the US
standard for DUI ].
The problem is that the law, adopted January 3,
2003 by the deputies of the right in a fervent
anti-pot crusade, tolerates a doubling of the
risk of fatal accidents by allowing up to .05 BAC
in the case of alcohol, whereas in the case of
cannabis (for which the relative risk is between
1.8 and 2.2) there is zero tolerance. Smoking a
joint behind the wheel is punished by two years
in prison.
On the presentation of its conclusions, July 1st,
2005, to the last inter-ministerial committee on
traffic safety (CISR), Dominique Perben, the new
minister of Transportation, did not hide his
embarrassment. "He wanted to make it a battle
horse against cannabis," relates one source
familiar with the report. "Now the study shows
that the government put the cart before the
horse; they should have awaited the results
before legislating." Neither Nicolas Sarkozy nor
Dominique Perben nor Xavier Bertrand (the
Ministry of Health having spent 533,571 euros for
the study) are any longer eager to carry this
political hot potato. And the Prime Minister
himself had to bite his tongue: on January 24,
Dominique de Villepin, at that time minister of
Interior, stated that "17% of fatal accidents
were associated with drug use." "These figures
are false," says one expert. "They are those of
the lobby of toxicologists with a vested interest
in sale of drug detection tests. Ministers and
deputies spouted so much nonsense for two years
that they're quite embarrassed." In the national
Assembly, at the time of the vote of the law,
the right denounced the laxity of the
"hallucinogenic left which would have us think
that only alcohol is dangerous." "Drugs behind
the wheel are responsible for more deaths than
speeding," we were told.
These declarations now stand contradicted by the
study, despite pressures that its authors
underwent for five months to make their
conclusions stick to the governmental line.
Guided by the team of Bernard Laumon of Inrets
(National institute for research on
transportation and safety), and coordinated by
the OFDT (French center on drugs and addiction),
their efforts were launched in October 2001 under
the Gayssot law. So as not to legislate without
having first determined the actual risk levels
linked to consumption of cannabis, the Jospin
government [former leftist government, now out of
power] had authorized researchers to take drug
tests of persons involved in fatal accidents.
Prescription drugs, even though they often cause
sleepiness at the wheel, were excluded from the
study following an intense lobbying effort by the
manufacturers. Urine samples were taken. When
they showed positive to the presence of a drug,
they were followed up by a blood sample.
Accident reports were then analyzed to determine
the culpability of each person. All of the data
were cross-compared with a control group of
accident subjects without drugs in their blood.
An enormous project."
After more than three years of work, a sample of
10,000 accidents was assembled. Due to problems
in reliability, this was finally reduced to
8,000, - an impressive figure which makes this a
world record. The result: if one compares the
risk thresholds obtained to the total number
killed on the road, alcohol above .05 BAC was
responsible for 2,000 deaths; speeding for
another 2,000; and cannabis 220. That's not
nothing, 220, but it is about equal to the number
of deaths attributed to those who drove with
between .02 and .05 BAC. However, those under 25
are over-represented.
Epidemiologists and accident experts have
succeeded in determining, for the first time, a
dose-effect relation: behind the wheel, cannabis
impairs vigilance and is strongly unadvised
because the more one smokes, the more one's risk
of a fatal accident increases. Less rapidly,
however, than with alcohol and in much lesser
degree.
The government is preparing itself to awkwardly
propound these two arguments. The anti-pot
deputies will be hard-pressed to wave the flag of
safety and yet recall that cannabis is illicit
and prohibited, while alcohol is freely sold. No
matter, with respect to the actual risks, there
is a double standard.
In the government, the embarrassment is evident
in the face of results which render its current
repressive arsenal incoherent. The publication
plan adopted after many delays is evidence: to
deaden the political impact of the study, it was
decided to entrust its explanation to the authors
only. So as to establish its credibility, it
was decided in the spring to submit it to a
review committee of the British Medical Journal,
one of the most prestigious scientific journals.
"We've accepted it, but its publication isn't
expected for several weeks," says the BMJ. It's
hard to control the publication date of the
study - but it's also hard to impugn the solidity
of its results.
Pubdate: Monday, October 3, 2005 © SA Libération |
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