How Much Does Marijuana Impair Driving?Posted by On

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This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Welcome to Impact Factor, your weekly dose of commentary on a new medical study. I’m Dr F. Perry Wilson from the Yale School of Medicine.

This week, we consider a question that has plagued humankind for ages: Why am I spending my time running clinical trials of digital health technologies when I could be smoking people up in Denmark and setting them on the highway to see how straight they drive?

I have been beaten to the punch, unfortunately, by this study, which is really an elegant approach to quantifying how much driving is impaired by marijuana.

The thing that makes marijuana tricky to study — aside from the fact that the Controlled Substances Act still ridiculously lists it as a Schedule I agent — is that it [doesn’t contain] just one thing.

There are two major psychoactive chemicals in cannabis: tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). You’ll know CBD from that store that opened up on your drive to work, with a clever name like “The High Life” or “Planet of the Vapes.”

To test how these chemicals affect driving, researchers from the Netherlands conducted a within-participant crossover trial. What that means is that each individual (26…

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