Worse driver: Rapper Nas busted for marijuana DUI or Vikings’ Adrian Peterson busted for 109MPH in 55MPH zone?

(Highbrid Nation) Yesterday I heard about two high profile celebrities caught wilding out while in their cars. Nas has been charged of driving while under the influence of marijuana stemming from a routine traffic stop back in September. Then there’s Minnesota Vikings animal status running back, Adrian Peterson who was issued a speeding citation last weekend for driving 109 mph on a suburban Minneapolis highway with a posted speed limit of 55 MPH.

While AP was only issued a citation, charges are pending against Nas who was arrested after he flunked a field sobriety test. The arresting officer said he observed “eyelid tremors in both eyes and body tremors.” after noticing a smell of weed inside his car. In his report he said Nas had “a green tongue with raised taste buds.”

So my question is… Who was more wrong? Does it even matter?

There are few studies on the relative impact of cannabis on driving ability and nobody would argue that you should blaze up a blunt and get behind the wheel. Or eat cheeseburgers or send text messages or put on mascara, for that matter.

However, when you read one study in Britain reported by New Scientist magazine, there may be truth to your friends’ notion that weed is safer than alcohol:

In the study, cannabis significantly affected only one criterion, known as tracking ability. Volunteers found it more difficult to hold a constant speed and follow the middle of the road accurately while driving around a figure-of-eight loop.

However, volunteers drinking the equivalent of a glass of wine fared worse than those who had smoked a joint.

[D]rivers on cannabis tended to be aware of their intoxicated state, and drove more cautiously to compensate. Indeed, doped-up volunteers often rated themselves as being more impaired than police surgeons brought in to evaluate their sobriety.

The problem in this debate is once we bring cannabis into it, ignorance reigns supreme. We have a society that tolerates a certain level of impairment while driving. There is a .08 blood-alcohol limit in the United States, which recognizes that there will be some people driving with <.08 BAC and they aren’t necessarily impaired. (.08 limits are called per se impairment, meaning no matter how well you drive, at .08 you’re impaired. It doesn’t mean that at .07 you’re not impaired, however; it just means that at .07 you’re not automatically deemed to be impaired, the state has to prove it.) It’s a sensible solution that realizes that “zero tolerance” for drinking and driving is an impossible and unnecessary standard.

But when we consider that driving marijuana smoker, suddenly there are only two states, sober and high, with people who’ve never smoked or maybe smoked irresponsibly when young imagining that one puff of the reefer moves you immediately from sober to red-eyed Cheetos-craving couch-lock.

Consider Irv Rosenfeld, the federal medical marijuana patient* who just set the Guinness World Record for smoking his 115,000th lifetime joint. He quite openly smokes his government marijuana while driving (his prescription legally allows him to) and insists that it has negligible impairing effect.

There is evidence that drivers with >5ng/ml of THC in the blood (use within past 1-3 hours) do have an increased risk of accident. However, there is also evidence that alcohol-using drivers at .05 BAC (well below .08 per se impairment) were bigger driving risks than very stoned (>5ng/ml) drivers.

My personal bottom line? If my choices for a ride home are a drunk and a stoner, I’ll ride with the stoner.

Now, as to Nas vs. Adrian Peterson. At 109 MPH, you are covering about 160ft/sec. If Nas was driving the speed limit while high, he was going 55 MPH, or 80ft/sec. If both have to dodge something on the road, Peterson has half the time Nas has to do it. I’m willing to believe that Peterson has quick reaction times and that Nas was impaired, but I can’t believe Peterson is going to be twice as quick as Nas. If you ask me, Peterson is far more guilty of endangering public safety, because he willingly chose to increase the risk to self and others by behaving in a reckless manner. Stoned Nas might have been a danger if he were unable to react quickly enough, but sober Peterson was a danger by his actions.

By the way, the DUI charges against Nas were dismissed because the drug test came back negative.

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*You do know that there are four Americans remaining in the Federal IND program, a.k.a. federal medical marijuana, that ran from 1978-1991, right? Yes, the same government that tells you there is no such thing as medical marijuana ships 9-oz tins of 300 pre-rolled government joints to four surviving members of this federal program.