High Driving

A few months ago there was a news report which, by skewing the conditions and conclusions of a supposedly scientific study, gave the very bogus impression that driving while high on weed is likely to result in much more injury and death than driving while drunk on alcohol. That was an obvious and stupendous lie, as anybody with half an ounce of sense and honesty would tell you. One of the best proofs of that can be seen in the question as to why, as far as I know, there is no organization called "MAHD," short for "Mothers Against High Driving," when for many years there's been a very visible and vocal group called "MADD," or "Mothers Against Drunk Driving."

The Daily Kos quotes someone named Jimmy Kimmel, who I assume is a late night talk show host, comic, or something, as making this very telling remark: "A recent report shows that pot smokers get into fewer car crashes than drunk people. Then again, it's easier to see what's coming when you're driving 11 miles an hour."

This backs up one of my favorite contentions, based on informal studies that I made four or five decades ago, namely that if you drive after you've smoked what the people I knew preferred to call "bush," well before those two Presidents were even heard of, the absolute worst that could happen would be that if you set out from D.C. headed for Baltimore, Maryland, there was every chance that after several hours of the most comfortable and incredibly precise motoring, during which you would have mentally solved several of the world's most pressing problems, you'd wind up instead in Wheeling, West Virginia.