Pot Impairment While Driving

Some Vermont legislators may feel vindicated by recent studies on marijuana use and driving safety. Jeremy Hobson, director of traffic advocacy and research for AAA, has reported on definitive studies that show there is no measurable, reliable blood test for evaluating driver impairment from marijuana use. This finding takes the process out of the area of “simple” (as in a blood-level alcohol test and standard) to the area of complicated.

Some people who are chronic users with high levels of THC in their blood are not necessarily impaired; some new users who just tried a hit or two can be seriously impaired . . . and then there is all the gray in between. And, just to further complicate matters, the convenient assumption that therefore all long-term marijuana smokers are safer on the road than the newbies apparently doesn’t apply either. Although there is no way to absolutely determine that the presence of marijuana in a person’s system caused impaired driving or an accident, Mr. Hobson suggests gathering behavioral evidence by specially trained law enforcement officers, as well as lab tests for this purpose. These may provide enough evidence to get that person off the road and/or charge them with impaired driving due to drug intoxication. Or maybe not.

What was omitted from the Valley News article on May 10 (“Basis for Laws on Pot, Driving Questioned”) was another startling finding: namely, that in Washington state, which legalized marijuana for recreational purposes last year, driving fatalities involving marijuana have doubled. According to Mr. Hobson, states that have legalized the drug for recreational use can expect many more accidents and fatalities in the future.

If you would like to read more, I encourage you to go to hereandnow.org and search for Jeremy Hobson/marijuana studies to hear his entire interview. It’s definitely worth your time and it’s timely.

Also, a warm thank you to Dean Whitlock, a self-professed liberal, for his recent Forum letter praising the House legislators (accused of tattering our liberal reputation) for voting down this bill. Dean’s words express it best, “Being liberal doesn’t require being reckless.”

Linda Mulley

Norwich

A Bad Way to Die

At a Quechee Club talk, the M.D./author of The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End of Life Care revised Dickens: We live in the best of times if you get an illness, for we have more amazing treatments than ever before in human history. But we live in the worst of times if you are dying, because we have more amazing treatments to keep you alive involving suffering and manacling to tubes than ever before.

I know. My mother spent 118 days as a medical prisoner in an intensive care unit in Oregon, stranded 3,000 miles from her Connecticut home, fully conscious, before she finally died in complete exhaustion. She was 73 and had emergency heart surgery while on vacation in 1985.

The speaker boasted that the entire adult population of Hawaii has had “the” conversation. You know — the one about death.

And this speaker recommended choosing one of three options which regrettably have the advertising ring of choices we have at a gas pump (high-octane, mid-octane or regular): maximum prolongation of life; medical care; or comfort care (i.e., pain management, usually opioids).

Otherwise, the mindless bureaucratic system will automatically default to throwing every medical intervention at the patient, regardless of pain and suffering.

This is exactly what it did to my mother for 118 days. I’m not blaming the doctors, who did their best. My father had insisted, “I want everything medically possible done to save her life” And who wouldn’t?

But let’s be frank: This constituted very expensive torture.

After hearing this presentation amounting to “get in the database or you’ll be defaulted to high-octane,” I am going to have tattooed on my chest these words: “I want Hospice.” That way nobody can push the wrong button and delete my wishes.

My own doctor tells me that those are the three magic words to say if you want to die at home and not in the hospital.

But a warning: Hospice only visits twice a week, so you’d better die quickly — as Scrooge admonishes the poor to do or you’ll go bankrupt with nursing care.

Paul Keane

Hartford