This article may have been around for some time, but has just appeared in our small-town newspaper under the heading of "News of the Weird" Editors Buried the Lede Researcher Jean-Louis Martin of the Universite Claude Bernard in Lyon, France, found (for a December British Medical Journal article) that consuming cannabis (marijuana) doubled motorists' likeliehood of a fatal auto collision, and alarming news headlines about the report followed. Less prominently noted in the article, and consequently in news reports, was that drivers impaired by alcohol were six times more likely than an unimpaired driver to have fatal collision, thus suggesting that the generally illegal drug, cannabis, is only one-third as dangerous for drivers as the legal drug, alcohol. Why, or how, this ended up under a weird news heading is anyone's guess, I have a feeling it may have been a clever ploy of the columnist to get it past our local editor without jeapordizing his byline. This news, however, is neither weird, strange, odd, or even unusual. It is, in fact, THE TRUTH. The same truth that has been documented over and over. The same truth that dictactes operating a motor vehicle under the influence of marijuana is approximately as dangerous as say, doing so while concurrently operating a cell phone. And like a cell phone, overuse cannot result in death or even appreciable sickness (driving excluded). Just thought I'd offer this, the next time someone starts in with the evils of pot, to have another scientific study to throw back in their face. Or into their voice mailbox, as it were.
Prolonged use of a cell phone MIGHT give you cancer, they're not sure though. Prolonged pot smoking MIGHT give you cancer, they're not 100% sure though.
