WebMD Holds Doctorate in Bull$#it

The armchair doctors over at WebMD recently published an article titled: Fatal Car Crashes Involving Pot Use Have Tripled in U.S., Study Finds.

On the surface, this sounds like a fairly damning headline that stands to toss quite the wrench into the spokes of the legalization unicycle. If we in the pro-cannabis community choose to cherry-pick certain data points from scientific studies that support our agenda while brazenly scuttling any information that may be contrary to our talking points, then we would be no better than the Kevin Sabet’s and Patrick Kennedy’s of this world. That is not our game.

We want honest, unbiased data from which to argue our side. If the increased exposure and scrutiny of cannabis reveals something genuinely negative or harmful about it, then I truly believe it is the responsibility of pot-enthusiasts to be informed and tell the truth about our favorite herb.

WebMD, with this article, really let me down. I never really considered WebMD on par with the Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins University in regards to their medical authority. I basically saw them as the Wikipedia of medicine. The information they provide had been posted in good faith and was a good spot to go for general medical inquiry.

With this article, WebMD stooped to the low of propagandist journalism. What could their possible motive be? If they are a simple medical information site, why publish articles that are more or less opinion pieces? It really makes me suspicious of their intentions and affiliations. It makes me wonder in whose pocket they live. Why take such a biased and one-sided view of cannabis when they project themselves as a more encyclopedic web resource?

Sniffing the bullshit:

High Times did the hard work of digging up numbers and stats and picking apart the holes in WebMD’s article. Here is an excerpt from the High Times piece:

“The first hint you’re being deceived is to notice the weasel words…Notice it is “Crashes involving marijuana use” and not “marijuana causing fatality crashes.” That’s because all the data is telling us is that marijuana is detected in the blood of drivers who died within an hour of a crash. Notice no mention of whether crashes overall have risen, either…The final caveat WebMD chose to omit, “Also, it is possible for a driver to test positive for marijuana in the blood up to one week after use,” is the one that deflates the scary statistic. These marijuana-positive dead drivers may just as well be innocent unimpaired drivers who smoked a joint a couple of days ago and got hit by some drunk driver.

All that a tripling of detection of marijuana in the blood of dead drivers tells us is that more people are smoking marijuana more often, not that marijuana is causing them to crash. We can verify this by consulting the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. In 1999, there were an estimated 8.7 million adults 18 and older who had smoked pot in the prior month. By 2012, there were 17.2 million, almost double the number of monthly tokers. If we break it down to people who toke 21 days or more per month, we’ve gone from 2.1 million to 6 million, almost triple. Among daily tokers, we’ve increased from 1.1 million to 3.5 million, more than triple…

So, with all this tripling of marijuana use, what has happened to traffic fatalities? They’re down, nationally and in almost every state, to their lowest recorded levels. The Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows us that in 1999, there were 37,140 fatal crashes, while in 2012, there were 29,757 – the first year there have been fewer than 30,000 traffic deaths in America. Measured in deaths per hundred million miles traveled (1.55 to 1.10), deaths per 100,000 population (15.30 to 10.39), deaths per 100,000 vehicles (19.61 to 12.57), and deaths per 100,000 licensed drivers (22.29 to 15.28) are at the lowest levels ever.”

The authors of the study itself seem to leave room for context and truth. “In an endnote to the study, the researchers pointed to several limitations with the research. One is that marijuana can be detected in the blood up to one week after use. And, therefore, the researchers said, ‘the prevalence of nonalcohol drugs reported in this study should be interpreted as an indicator of drug use, not necessarily a measurement of drug impairment.'”

This whole WebMD article just stinks of manipulated data and skewed information. All that is mentioned above is cause for indignation, but, truth be told, the part that irked me the most was this little gem right here: “marijuana impairs driving in much the same way that alcohol does, explained Jonathan Adkins, deputy executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. It impairs judgment, affects vision and makes a person more distractible and more likely to take risks while driving.”

What a festering load of donkey nuts that is. Can I get a show of hands on how many stoners out there get baked and take undue risks when driving? Anyone ever hit that bong and thought, “fuck yeah, man, let’s go try and jump my minivan over the ravine.” Seems to me this is just one more blindly referenced talking point without fact or personal experience to back it up. Several studies have been done exclusively on stoned driving and the results do not indicate what Mr. Adkins is claiming. What that sentence should say is, “marijuana impairs driving in the following ways: it makes your music awesome, you’ll feel like you’re going 90mph when you’re actually going 12mph, you run the risk of completely forgetting where you’re going but will likely end up in the drive-thru.”

Just tell the damned truth. Is that too much to hope for?