Would you like to refuel and drive? CBD-dominant weed won’t interfere with your driving skills, says a new study

Smoking CBD-Rich Marijuana Has ‘No Significant Impact’ On Driving Ability, Study Finds

With the trend towards legalization around the world and a wide range of options for using cannabis, CBD-rich cannabis creates another level of complexity when it comes to driving disorders. This is probably one of the more difficult problems that the world has not yet fully figured out. Nobody wants disabled drivers on the road, but at the same time – the presence of THC does not necessarily indicate impairment.

If cannabis was discovered “at all” before legalization, it would be more than enough to convict you of a DUID (Drug Driving). The problem with simply testing for the “presence” of cannabis, however, is that cannabis can linger in your system for weeks. This means that you can smoke a joint at a party a few days before canceling and still test positive for cannabis. While adding a number variable at some points to indicate an impairment, science has not yet worked out many kinks.

Currently, most drug tests are done by “drug detection experts”. These are basically people trained to tell if you’re high. They are looking for basic clues like motor skills and may try to fool you with suggestive language. Your entire goal is to find out whether you have a driving disability or not.

Most of the time, judging whether you are impaired while driving will depend on the fact that you simply tested positive and a police officer claims you were impaired. Not very scientific.

CBD – THC limits exceeded but not affected?

CBD has antipsychotic properties and is often blamed for offsetting the euphoric side effects of THC. Now with the advent of CBD-rich weed, people don’t smoke to get high, but rather to calm down feelings of anxiety, depression, etc. That doesn’t mean the weed doesn’t contain THC. For example, strains like Harlequin contain up to 5% THC but around 9% CBD. This strain helps you feel clear and relaxed, but you don’t really feel “high”. In other words, you are likely to be more “aware” of your surroundings.

However, if, contrary to current testing protocols, you smoke a harlequin joint and pull yourself over and get tested, you are likely to be dealing with some type of DUI whether or not you are not impaired.

To support this, a new study from Switzerland tested 33 participants in a pilot study, which gave each participant a joint with either 500 mg of tobacco and either 500 mg of CBD-rich cannabis (17% CBD | 0.9% THC) or 500 mg gave a placebo that didn’t contain nicotine or CBD.

Their results showed that those who smoked cannabis rich in CBD and the control group had no significant differences in reaction time. They noted excess THC in their blood samples, which the researchers took right after the test was completed. A coin toss indicated whether participants were given a CBD joint or the placebo. Seven and fourteen days later, they retested the group, but gave the group that received the placebo the CBD, and vice versa. Within the statistical analysis they divided the groups;

The researchers used three different psychological ratings that indicated attitudes towards general road safety and aimed to see if someone was fit to drive. The test included reaction tests that tested their ability to react to pressure from a “complex stimulus”. Their overall conclusion at the end of the study was that there was no significant difference between the control group and the CBD group.

This despite the fact that all participants were above the legal threshold and would be technically charged with “driving under the influence of alcohol”. As you can see, this is a tough job for law enforcement agencies to do because how can you prove impairment when there is no difference in performance? Either the limit would have to be increased or some other means of testing the impairment invented. Some people are trying to develop digital solutions for impairment testing, but whether this can be used reliably in a real-world scenario has not yet been “proven”. At least not at the level where the technology is being rolled out on a massive scale.

“Although free THC levels reached levels seen as symptoms of impairment in other studies where THC-rich marijuana was smoked, no signs of impairment were seen in the current study,” the authors write. “These results suggest that higher concentrations of CBD cause negative allosteric effects in the endocannabinoid system and prevent the formation of such symptoms.” – SOURCE

For this reason, field sobriety tests are still the primary means of determining your impairment by the police.

Why it is important that we get an accurate test remedy

As cannabis becomes more widespread, we need an accurate means of testing impairments. With alcohol, however, they have a pretty solid heart rate, which is what it means to be “impaired” – with weed it’s not that easy.

The reason we want proper testing protocols is to keep people from really impaired driving. I have been smoking weed for twenty years and while most of the time there is no real problem driving an hour or two after smoking weed, I have felt “impaired” before. Especially under the influence of edibles. Some of the newer strains are also designed to obliterate your sobriety, so having a set standard of “this is too high” is a good thing.

Fortunately, even with these ultra-tall strains, we haven’t seen any real increase in road deaths due to the legalization of cannabis. We also need to protect consumers from the police who want to blackmail them for their money with arbitrary decisions or who simply want to demonstrate their power.

Whoever officially finds out about this problem is a very wealthy person.

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