Edward Wood: Commercial pot push comes with great risks to public safety

The camel stuck its nose into Pennsylvania’s tent in 2016 when the Medical Marijuana Act was signed into law. It didn’t take long for the beast to try to crawl all the way in. Senate Bill 846 now seeks to “legalize” so-called recreational marijuana. It will make a bad situation even worse.

It’s straight out of the addiction-for-profit industry’s playbook. Start with a specious claim that marijuana is a medicine to legalize medical marijuana. Then move on to full-scale commercial operations pushing more drugs into communities across our nation.

Marijuana legalization is a misnomer. Legislators in Harrisburg are debating legislation that proposes the outright commercialization of marijuana. Today’s high-potency THC drugs are not the marijuana of the past and can have up to 99% THC potency.

If passed, marijuana commercialization would include sales, advertising and state-sponsored promotion of marijuana businesses. This won’t end well.

I know firsthand the consequences of DUID (driving under the influence of drugs). My son, Brian, was tragically taken from us in a DUID accident in 2011. The two women responsible for the collision that took my son’s life had marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin in their systems at the time of the crash. It’s a loss I don’t want another family to experience.

The fiction of restricting marijuana use to adults is just that — fiction. In my home state of Colorado, where teens are now accessing cannabis wellness centers and marijuana health clinics in droves, they may be forgiven for believing that marijuana is as healthy for them as broccoli or quinoa. Their legislators thought they were pioneers a decade ago. Now they are dealing with the consequences.

Pennsylvania legislators can’t plead ignorance. A 2022 study found that youth in states with legal recreational marijuana were more likely to use marijuana than youth in non-legal states, despite these drugs remaining illegal for minors. That’s despite state regulations that do not permit advertising, something Pennsylvania’s legislation would permit.

Currently, Pennsylvania has one of the nation’s strongest laws against driving under the influence (DUI). That would change if SB 846 is passed.

For example, the legislation would prohibit the use of medical marijuana as a DUI defense but says nothing about the drug bought on the commercial market. This bill is poorly drafted and fails to recognize the intoxicating nature of THC. The bill is silent on THC.

Legalizing marijuana makes drugged driving more common, and it also makes it more difficult to enforce impaired driving laws. According to Colorado’s Department of Public Safety, drugged driving, including polydrug-impaired driving, constitutes about half of all DUI charges. Alcohol constitutes the other half. Convictions for impairment by alcohol were significantly greater than those for THC because of the challenges around identifying THC impairment. Alcohol impairment can be objectively determined by a blood test, THC impairment is not as simple to identify and requires additional training for officers.

Incidentally, Pennsylvania does not track conviction rates by drugged driving categories like Colorado does. If the state does commercialize marijuana, in the future it will be left wondering what the effect was on drugged driving and traffic fatalities, because the effects aren’t even being measured.

PennDOT does report that the state had an enviable 13% decline in traffic fatalities over the last decade. Why would legislators want to trade that safety record for something closer to ours in Colorado, which was 38%? Colorado isn’t alone. A 2023 study found that recreational marijuana states had more traffic fatalities than states without commercialized marijuana.

All of this should give legislators pause and residents the ammunition they need to stand up to the addiction-for-profit industry that’s just looking to grow its profits at the expense of Pennsylvanians’ health and safety.

Edward Wood is the founder and president of DUID Victim Voices, which works to change state laws regarding drugged driving.