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From
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Alcohol impairs driving more than marijuana
19:00 20 March 02
Arran Frood
A single glass of wine will impair your driving more than smoking a joint. And under
certain test conditions, the complex way alcohol and cannabis combine to affect
driving behaviour suggests that someone who has taken both may drive less
recklessly than a person who is simply drunk.
These are the findings of a major new study by British transport researchers. The
unpublished research, seen exclusively by New Scientist, stops well short of
condoning driving under the influence of even small amounts of cannabis. But in a
week which has seen renewed debate in Britain surrounding the criminalisation of
cannabis, it throws an uncomfortable spotlight on a problem confronting
governments everywhere - how to deter the growing numbers of cannabis users from
"dope driving".
Photo: Getty Images
At present there is no accurate test that can reveal whether a driver has taken
cannabis before driving, and developing one will not be easy. But even when this
problem is cracked, another will remain - where to set the safety threshold for
smoking cannabis.
Advocates of zero tolerance say there should be penalties for drivers caught with any
amount of recently smoked cannabis in their body. The new research suggests that
would only be credible if governments also adopted zero tolerance on drink driving.
Middle of the road
The new study was undertaken by the Transport Research Laboratory in
Crowthorne, Berkshire, and confirms the results of a preliminary study more than a
year ago. Researchers at the TRL, led by Barry Sexton, gave 15 volunteers doses of
cannabis or alcohol, or a combination of both, before letting them loose on an array
of psychomotor tests and a sophisticated driving simulator.
The volunteers were given either enough alcohol to raise alcohol levels in the blood
to 50 milligrams per 100 millilitres - about 60 per cent of Britain's legal limit of 80
mg/100 ml - or a specially prepared marijuana joint designed to deliver the same
high typically experienced by smokers.
In the study, cannabis significantly affected only one criterion, known as tracking
ability. Volunteers found it more difficult to hold a constant speed and follow the
middle of the road accurately while driving around a figure-of-eight loop. The TRL
researchers point out in their draft report that this test requires drivers to hold
their
concentration for a short time, a task which is particularly badly affected by the
intoxicating effects of cannabis.
Cautious driving
However, volunteers drinking the equivalent of a glass of wine fared worse than
those who had smoked a joint. Those who were given both alcohol and cannabis
performed worse still, reinforcing the idea that alcohol has a cumulative effect when
taken with other drugs.
But the study also found that drivers on cannabis tended to be aware of their
intoxicated state, and drove more cautiously to compensate. Indeed, doped-up
volunteers often rated themselves as being more impaired than police surgeons
brought in to evaluate their sobriety.
Surprisingly, drinking alcohol didn't offset this cautious behaviour, opening up the
unproven possibility that a driver who is moderately drunk might be better off under
some conditions if they had also smoked.
This cautious behaviour is in line with findings by other researchers. "Whereas
alcohol promotes risk taking like fast speeds and close following, cannabis promotes
conservative driving, but may cause attention problems and misperceptions of time,"
says Nicholas Ward, technical adviser to the Immortal project - a three-year
European Union trial designed to quantify the crash risk drivers face after taking
various drugs and medicines.
19:00 20 March 02
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