Marijuana and Alcohol, a Worse Mix than Either Alone
In Denver, legislation was recently passed to permit the use of marijuana in bars, restaurants and other business establishments. There’s a lot of hurdles that must be overcome for a business to actually begin allowing use of cannabis products, so no businesses have yet begun offering this mix yet. And patrons have to bring their own products because pot and alcohol or food can’t be sold in the same establishment. But once the new law is fully active, the city can have patrons in bars munching edibles and yoga studios or art galleries with pot-smoking rooms.
One wonders if those voting for this law are familiar with the fact that consumption of alcohol and cannabis products together greatly increase the impact of these drugs.
A Look at the Effects of Combined Pot Consumption and Drinking
A study published by Science Daily reports that significantly higher measures of THC were found among those who drank alcohol ten minutes before smoking marijuana. In this test, some people smoked low-potency marijuana and others vaporized higher potency pot (6.7% THC). The higher-potency pot users who also drank alcohol had a THC measurement in their blood that was 62% higher than those who did not consume alcohol.
The Department of Transportation had already learned that alcohol and marijuana affect people in rather opposite ways in terms of their abilities to drive. While an intoxicated person or someone who is high might be able to compensate somewhat for impairments during driving, when the drugs are combined, this ability to compensate is wiped out. This explains why the odds of having an accident after a driver consumes alcohol was estimated at 7.4 times that of a sober person but after using marijuana and alcohol together, a driver’s risk is 8.4 times higher.
It looks like the use of marijuana and alcohol together is far from a rarity. Researchers publishing their work in Scientific American found that if a person ever smokes marijuana and drinks, he tends to do both together.
To Make Matters Worst, the Delayed Effects of Edibles
While smoked marijuana takes effect in just minutes, edible cannabis products can take two full hours to reach their peak effects. This delay has had disastrous effects for some people who were not familiar with the delay. A person using edibles the first time can be tricked into overdosing by the lapse, as happened with Levi Thamba Pongi, a 19-year-old student who died in Colorado in 2014. He bought and ate a single cannabis-infused cookie. That single cookie actually contained six doses of THC. Pongi suffered a breakdown after consuming this overdose and jumped off a balcony, killing himself.
This delay means that a patron at a bar could have several drinks, eat a cannabis edible product and not have the full effects hit him until later – when he could be driving home. It’s possible there’d be no signs of a problem at the bar so the bartender would have no responsibility to refuse further drinks to this patron. But the individual’s risk while driving home might be extreme, endangering both this driver and anyone in his vicinity.
Are Voters Fully Informed Before Voting?
One wonders if the Denver media educated the public on these effects before this legislation came to a vote. Alongside pro-marijuana articles, did the Denver media reveal the increased risk of alcohol and marijuana consumption together? Would any voting public legalize the consumption of cannabis in bars if they fully understood the increased risks?
Unfortunately, the whole State of Colorado is rather a test case for what happens when marijuana is legalized. Just as unfortunately, the citizens of Colorado will suffer whatever ill effects result from this experiment.
