As more and more states legalize both recreational and medical marijuana, sales in the U.S. are expected to top $33 billion by the end of this year, a 32 percent increase over last year. And if the market continues to grow as expected, sales could exceed $52 billion by 2026. In the latest state to open its market—New Jersey—the first licenses have been awarded to medical-marijuana stores. As weed becomes more widely available, concerns are also growing about the risks of driving while high on pot. Is it more dangerous than driving while drunk? The New York Times answers this question by saying that getting behind the wheel after smoking a joint poses distinctive risks. Research shows that THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis, impairs a number of behaviors related to driving, including the ability to weave between lanes, and delays response times in general. Psychoactive effects can also make cannabis dangerous, such as the paranoia that some people experience while high could induce a panic attack while on the road. Weed can muddle perceptions of safety, and also create an altered sense of time and the sludgy sense that everything around you is moving slower than it actually is. What’s more, unlike alcohol, where there’s a definite quantity that constitutes a single drink, marijuana has no agreed-upon dosage. It's tricky for pot users to predict how exactly they’ll be impaired, especially with edibles, which take longer to be absorbed into your system. Debates over legalization often focus on the driving-while-high issue, with many critics voicing concerns that law enforcement has no way to measure how impaired a driver might be, even as traffic accidents have increased in legal states. But that isn’t stopping the powerful cannabis industry from pushing for legalization and lax regulations and oversight of sales.
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