I despise marijuana. For that reason, I’m very glad when seemingly reputable studies back up my visceral sense that marijuana is a terrible drug that destroys people’s lives and, along the way, destroys American society.

First, I went to ChatGPT for it to sum up the obvious, which is that a drug that alters people’s temporal and spatial perception makes them lousy drivers:

• Key Effects of Cannabis on Driving:
  • Slower reaction time: Drivers may take longer to respond to unexpected events, like a car stopping suddenly.
  • Impaired coordination: THC, the psychoactive component in cannabis, affects motor control.
  • Reduced attention and focus: Cannabis can make it harder to concentrate on multiple tasks at once (like watching the road, checking mirrors, and managing speed).
  • Distorted perception of time and distance: This can result in misjudging how far away a car is or how fast it's moving.
  • Drowsiness: Especially with higher doses or edibles, which can produce longer-lasting effects.
• What the Research Shows:

·       Driving under the influence of cannabis doubles the risk of a crash, according to meta-analyses.

·       The impairment is most significant within 1 to 4 hours after use, especially when smoked or vaped.

·       Regular users may experience less obvious impairment subjectively but still show measurable deficits in reaction time and lane control.

All of that falls into the “Duh” category.

What should also be a “duh” is that a new study from AAA’s Foundation for Traffic Safety says that pot users have absolutely no idea how dangerous they are on the road. I already knew this from having had dealings with stoners, but seeing it in black and white is still disturbing:

In the Phase 2 survey, 84.8% of consumers indicated that they drive the same day that they consume cannabis, compared to never driving after use (defined by either waiting 8 hours or more and sleeping or not the same day). This is slightly lower in legal states (78.4%) compared to the other state categories (medical, 86.5%; not legal, 87.9%).  About 1 in 5 (19.0%) thought their driving was worse after use, while others viewed their driving as the same (46.9%), a little better (14.7%), or much better (19.4%). Only 29.2% of respondents believed a police officer could detect the influence of cannabis, 46.7% did not believe they could detect it, and 24.1% were unsure.

If a stoner dies in a one-car crash, so be it. That’s an assumption of the risk, but there are innocents out there who are dying at their hands. After all, with an average increase of 4% in the number of fatal car crashes in states that have legalized marijuana, you know there are a lot of unwilling victims sent Heaven-ward.

In addition, a new study establishes that pot use dramatically increases heart disease in regular users:

People who use marijuana are putting themselves at up to twice the risk of having a heart attack, stroke or dying from heart disease.

University of California researchers reviewed 24 studies involving 200 million people to investigate the relationship between weed and cardiovascular disease, stroke and acute coronary syndrome (ACS) - a group of heart conditions in which there is reduced or blocked blood flow to the heart, such as a heart attack.

They found there was a 29 percent higher risk of ACS, a 20 percent higher risk for stroke and double the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, which includes coronary artery disease, heart failure and irregular heartbeats.

Again, if this were a burden only the users, so be it. But in a country in which everyone is insured, whether by private companies or the government, it is a burden on the nation, and I resent that.

You see, the problem with marijuana is that it’s not just physically dangerous to users, it destroys them psychologically and our country with it. It destroys energy, ambition, intellectual curiosity...everything. It makes people, especially young men, inert. It is as much a war on men as the left’s vicious shticks about “toxic masculinity. There is a reason the left is so gung-ho to legalize marijuana, and it’s not to relieve certain populations of the burden of illegality. It is to weaken America.

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