Jane Kelley wrote in a message to David Loudenback:
DL>It baffles me that alcohol is legal and kills thousands every year, and
DL>the "ellicit drug" marijuana is outlawed and there has never been a
DL>documented case of death by it.  If anything, alcohol should be illegal.
 JK> The combination of the two is very deadly, especially in
 JK> youngsters.  It managed to kill several members of one daughter's
 JK> high school class before their graduation.  I knew some of those
 JK> kids.
 JK> The rate that the alcohol stops affecting the body is different
 JK> than that of the pot.  When they are combined, there is some
 JK> terrible effect in the wee hours of the morning with a teenaged
 JK> stoned driver behind the wheel of some very fast car.
This is begging for elaboration and correction of Jane's
unfounded and misleading marijuana info.  I will be happy to start in
again just to set the record straight.
For example, Car & Driver magazine has done studies of both the
effects of alcohol and marijuana on driving.  Both of these substances
are used as home remedies in lieu of mainstream medicine for, among
other things, stress-relief.  The test results of Car & Driver's
1980 marijuana study demonstrated that marijuana intoxication did not 
significantly impair driving. (Car & Driver, June 1980, Volume 25,
Number 12, Title: "Puff, the Dangerous Driver", page 43).
The article concluded that driving while intoxicated by
marijuana was bad, although there was no substantial evidence to
support this in the article except gratuitous opinion.  The
inconsistent opinion was obviously included as a sop to political
correctness.  Compared to the previous driving and drinking test
conducted by the same magazine two years previously, there was
*very* little degradation of lap-times or driving ability under
marijuana intoxication.
A similar test previously conducted by Canada Track and Traffic had 
similar results except that they did not gratuitously come to similar 
conclusions about "dangers," perhaps because of the lower level of 
scare-propaganda extant during that period in canada.
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