How Weed Saves Lives
Twenty states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana under the logic of helping patients manage chronic pain. This has also made it possible for many recreational users to score weed legally, and that may be a good thing for everyone - non-users and disapproving parents included. By substituting for alcohol, recreational marijuana use may reduce the prevalence of drunk driving and save lives.
Three researchers published evidence of this effect in a recent paper entitled “Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption.” The paper investigates the impact of medical marijuana laws. But given that most prescriptions are for self-reported pain symptoms, government monitoring is costly and difficult, and dispensaries and home cultivation make it easy to share with recreational users, they do not just look at medicinal use of pot.
(An earlier working paper is available here and the final paywalled article can be accessed here.)
The authors look at 3 states that legalized medicinal marijuana in the mid 2000s: Montana, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Using data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, they find that marijuana use increased in Montana - where 3% of the population is registered under medicinal marijuana laws - by 1.7%. That’s 0.9% more than in neighboring states that have not legalized marijuana. Rhode Island saw a more modest increase and Vermont, which did not allow dispensaries until 2011 and has under 500 registered patients, saw no significant increase.
Traffic fatalities are the leading cause of death among Americans ages 5-34, with alcohol impaired driving responsible for ⅓ of roughly 10,000 annual deaths. Both weed and alcohol slow reaction time and otherwise mess with driving abilities, but marijuana seems to be much less impairing:
Drivers under the influence of marijuana reduce their velocity, avoid risky maneuvers, and increase their “following distances,” suggesting compensatory behavior. In addition, there appears to be an important learning-by-doing component to driving under the influence of marijuana: experienced users show substantially less functional impairment than infrequent users.
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http://priceonomics.com/how-weed-saves-lives/
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That's why they make dugouts 