Wash. state traffic official to talk spike in impaired driving accidents
A traffic safety official from Washington state is delivering a sober talk on the dangers of stoned drivers and weed-fueled fatal crashes as Massachusetts takes the next step toward recreational pot sales today.
“This isn’t a joke or a game. It’s very serious,” said Darrin Grondel, director of the Washington State Traffic Safety Commission on a spike in deaths from drug-impaired drivers in his state.
“The public needs to be very aware of how little we know about marijuana and impairment,” he told the Herald on the eve of his trip here. “A lot of research still needs to be done. But there’s got to be controls in place.”
Grondel is scheduled to give a talk at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s School of Public Health and Sciences this morning on drug-impaired driving. He’ll share how fatal crashes for drivers who tested positive for pot have shot up by more than
100 percent — from 13 fatal crashes a year to 27 — after recreational weed sales started in 2014 in Washington, he said.
“I’m not for or against marijuana, I’m just saying you’ve got to be prepared for what’s coming,” he added, calling the “vertical curve” of all crashes linked to drugs alarming.
Today is the day the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission will start accepting applications for recreational pot businesses. Grondel said it’s “ironic” he’s speaking at UMass on the same day the application process rolls out in the Bay State. He said Washington state is now seeing what happens a few years into a world with legal weed.
Daily sales have now hit $4.7 million, he said, ringing up $316 million in pot taxes for the Evergreen State annually.
Edibles and drinks infused with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, also continue to become more potent, Grondel said. Early on, THC levels in edible pot products contained 3 to 6 percent THC — with that average soaring to 93 percent THC for “oils,” he added.
“A lot of people think users will drive slower on pot, but we know very little about impairment,” he said. Smoking pot and ingesting it, Grondel stressed, affects the brain in very different ways.
He’s worried, he added, about society’s “indifference” with drugimpaired driving.
“My message,” Grondel said about his talk today, “will be around the misperception about driving while on marijuana. And the big question is still the long-term impairment for those who consume pot daily.”