Last week a Utah man was charged with driving under the influence of marijuana in a car crash that claimed the life of another.
According to news outlets, witnesses saw driver try to hide a bag of marijuana immediately following the crash.
We have written before about the increase in drugged driving incidents elsewhere around the country.
For instance, in December of 2014, Oklahoma authorities reported a man with marijuana both in his system and on his person drove into oncoming traffic, crashing into another vehicle and killing its driver.
That same month the National Institute on Drug Abuse updated its marijuana research paper, saying, “Marijuana is the illicit drug most frequently found in the blood of drivers who have been involved in accidents, including fatal ones,” and citing research that marijuana is increasingly detected in fatal vehicle accidents.
In 2011, the Office of National Drug Control Policy released a report analyzing traffic accidents from 2005 – 2009. The report noted, “Among fatally injured males who tested positive for drugs, 28 percent tested positive for cannabinoids compared with 17 percent of females,” and that, “Cannabinoids were reported in 43 percent of fatally injured drivers under age 24 who tested positive for drugs.”
