Alarming stats about drug use and driving among teens
Motor-vehicle collisions kill more Canadians aged 16 to 25 than any other cause. More than half of these deaths are related to the use of drugs or alcohol.
For many young people, this statistic may seem far removed from their day-today lives. For many parents, it may seem to represent something that happens to other people’s children.
But the research tells a different story, and our recent study out of the University of Waterloo has found that almost half of Grade 11 and 12 students across Canada — representing 351,900 teens — reported engaging in at least one alcohol- or marijuana-related driving or passenger behaviours that may put them at risk.
Our study, based on more than 24,600 surveys in all 10 provinces, looked at the habits of Canadian high school drivers in Grade 11 and 12, and passengers in Grade 9 to 12 as they related to alcohol and marijuana use. The findings were concerning. Of the Grade 11 and 12 students surveyed, about 9 per cent — representing 66,600 teens across Canada — had driven within an hour of consuming alcohol, and 9.4 per cent had driven within two hours of using marijuana.
For passengers, the numbers were even higher. More than a third of students in Grade 9 to 12 reported riding in a vehicle when the driver had consumed at least one alcoholic drink in the previous hour, and one-in-five got in a vehicle when the driver had used marijuana in the previous two hours.
Boys had higher odds of driving after drinking than girls, and girls had higher odds of being a passenger in that situation. School region socio-economic status wasn’t a factor.
While the fact young people were engaging in this behaviour may not be surprising given the traffic collision data, some of the differences between provinces should give us pause, particularly as it relates to marijuana.
In Ontario, 7 per cent of students reported driving after using marijuana. In Saskatchewan, the rate was nearly three times higher at 20 per cent. While 17 per cent of young people in Ontario reported riding in a vehicle with someone who had used marijuana in Newfoundland and Labrador, the rate was 31 per cent.
At a time when the federal and provincial governments are drafting legislation to legalize recreational marijuana, we need to think of all of the steps needed if we are to truly mitigate some of the risks related to driving under the influence. We must arm law enforcement, educators and parents with the tools that they need to keep people safe.
These steps include ways to keep marijuana out of the hands of minors if it were to become more widely accessible, and creating strong policies to reduce marijuana-impaired driving.
As the first G20 country to legalize recreational marijuana, Canada can learn from some of the successful alcohol and tobacco control policies around the world when it comes to achieving our collective goals of saving lives. We’ll need to think about factors, such as minimum purchasing age, limits on potency, the various forms of marijuana and product regulation, mandatory fines for driving high, and license suspensions.
Many of these measures could take years, and we should ensure they are in place as we move toward wider availability of marijuana.
While education is ongoing on the drinking-and-driving front, we need to consider ways to communicate the risks of driving high to people who may not fully comprehend the risks.
With marijuana on the verge of becoming available for recreational use in retail outlets and the possibility of greater availability, we need to take a sciencebased approach to policy and regulation. It must be regulated in a way that restricts youth access, marijuana-impaired driving, as well as ensuring that we tackle the issue of black-market sales.
As the federal and provincial governments continue to prepare for legalization, we must demand that they rely heavily on scientific evidence and data in making their decisions and to develop effective policies.
As we still have some way to go in curbing impaired driving related to one drug, alcohol, we need to take great care to ensure that we’re adequately prepared for another.
Leia Minaker is a professor at the University of Waterloo and the university’s Propel Centre for Population Health Impact. Jacob Shelley is a professor at the University of Western Ontario’s Faculty of Law
As the first G20 country to legalize recreational marijuana, Canada can learn from some of the successful alcohol and tobacco control policies around the world