Feds Feature Stoned Christmas Tree In New Ad Warning About Marijuana-Impaired Driving Around The Holidays
From toxifillers.com with love
Ahead of the holiday season, federal officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have released new messaging aimed at promoting safe driving habits among cannabis consumers. One ad, recently deployed on social media by marijuana regulators in Virginia and officials from other states, features what appears to be a stoned Christmas tree-shaped cannabis bud and includes the reminder: “If you enjoy the holiday greenery, find a sober ride.”
The holiday-themed messages are being made available by NHTSA as part of its effort to curb drunk and drug-impaired driving, a self-described “social norming” campaign that the agency has dubbed “If You Feel Different, You Drive Different.” It comes as other, state-level officials similarly work to raise awareness about the importance of driving sober during the holidays.
The stoned tree ad is, according to NHTSA’s campaign, intended to run from December 1 through December 10. A separate one—featuring a car in a snow globe and the text “Don’t let a DUI shake up your holidays”—is timed for December 11 through January 1. Drunk and drug-impaired driving typically spike around the holidays.
“‘Weed’ like to remind you that no matter what time of year it is, driving while impaired is still illegal,” CCA said in a social media post on Friday, unable to resist a cannabis pun. “If you’ve been partaking, call a sober friend, rideshare, or taxi to get you home safely.”
“Weed” like to remind you that no matter what time of year it is, driving while impaired is still illegal. If you’ve been partaking, call a sober friend, rideshare, or taxi to get you home safely. If you feel different, you drive different. #BuzzedDriving #ImpairedDriving pic.twitter.com/MQachKTKv8
— Virginia Cannabis Control Authority (@Virginia_CCA) December 20, 2024
Officials in Massachusetts, New Jersey and other states have also posted versions of the federally created stoned Christmas tree ad.
The separate snow globe message, meanwhile, includes the reminder: “If you’re high, get a ride.”
Each NHTSA ad also features icons depicting a marijuana leaf, vape pen and gummy bear alongside an icon of crossed-out car keys. The symbols communicate that if someone chooses to consume cannabis, they shouldn’t get behind the wheel. (Notably, animal-shaped cannabis gummies are outlawed in a number of states due to concerns over making products potentially appealing to children.)
Always get a safe, sober ride home:
Schedule a rideshare
— nhtsagov (@NHTSAgov) December 19, 2024
Virginia cannabis regulators’ use of the new NHTSA-produced ad comes on the heels of CCA and regulatory agencies in other states posting other holiday-related advice around marijuana—for example guidance on how to legally “give the gift of green.”
In a separate notice on social media, CCA urged residents not to drive under the influence of marijuana, asking them to take a safe-driving pledge to find a sober driver, consume at home, walk or call a rideshare service or simply “wait it out” after consuming.
To encourage consumers to shop at legal, licensed retailers, meanwhile, New Jersey’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission retooled lyrics from The Sound of Music and posted them to social media alongside a 17-second slideshow of marijuana products.
The New Jersey officials noted that there are more than 190 licensed cannabis retailers statewide going into the holiday season, pointing consumers to an online list of where to find one.
It’s not uncommon for officials in states where marijuana is legal to launch campaigns ahead of the holiday season to encourage safe, responsible use of the drug. Last month, for example, multiple states, as well as federal officials in the U.S. and Canada, issued reminders about their marijuana laws ahead of Thanksgiving. Some urged adults to consume responsibly if they planned to partake during the holiday, while others warned people to avoid traveling across political borders with cannabis.
In recent years, cannabis regulators across the country—including in Virginia and New Jersey, along with California, New York, Massachusetts and others—have similarly marked the holiday season with messages about gifting marijuana, keeping cannabis products secure and even making infused Christmas cookies.
“Planning to get high on holiday cheer? As you gear up for the festivities, keep the good times rollin’ in the safest way possible, and make sure your plans include a sober ride,” CCA said last year.
Meanwhile, calls in Virginia continue for the state to legalize a commercial cannabis market, with advocates pointing to complaints from law enforcement that the vast majority of drug-related crime is now tied to marijuana.
Though Virginia’s legislature passed the retail sales bill this session, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) rejected it in March, claiming in a veto message that states that have legalized “have seen adverse effects on children’s and adolescent’s health and safety, increased gang activity and violent crime, significant deterioration in mental health, decreased road safety, and significant costs associated with retail marijuana that far exceed tax revenue.”
Democratic senators said the veto means it’s likely legal stores won’t open in Virginia until 2027 or later.
Earlier this month, Rouse and another lawmaker, Del. Paul Krizek (D) announced plans to reintroduce legalization legislation in the coming 30-day legislative session that kicks off next month.
“I think we have to,” Krizek told Marijuana Moment on Tuesday. “I think it’s incumbent on us to introduce it again to keep it alive.”
The new materials follow other efforts by federal agencies to encourage safe cannabis consumption.
In 2021, for example, NHTSA tried to get the word out about the dangers of impaired driving through an ad featuring a computer-generated cheetah smoking a joint and driving a convertible.
Critics noted that the world’s fastest land animal hardly fits the stereotype of a cannabis consumer that the government has historically played into, while other commenters pointed out at the time that the ad made the cheetah look confusingly cool as he’s broke the law.
The agency also played on horror-movie tropes in a 2020 ad featuring two men running for their lives from an axe murderer. The pair ultimately find a vehicle to escape the scene, but the driver pauses before he turns the key in the ignition. “Wait wait wait,” he says. “I can’t drive. I’m high.”
While it’s widely understood that driving under the influence of cannabis is dangerous, the relationship between consumption and impairment is a messy one.
In October, a scientific review of available evidence on the relationship between cannabis and driving found that most research “reported no significant linear correlations between blood THC and measures of driving,” although there was an observed relationship between levels of the cannabinoid and reduced performance in some more complex driving situations.
“The consensus is that there is no linear relationship of blood THC to driving,” the paper concluded. “This is surprising given that blood THC is used to detect cannabis-impaired driving.”
That report was by no means the first research to challenge the popular view that THC blood levels are a suitable proxy for driving impairment. In 2015, for example, NHTSAconcluded that it’s “difficult to establish a relationship between a person’s THC blood or plasma concentration and performance impairing effects,” adding that “it is inadvisable to try and predict effects based on blood THC concentrations alone.”
In a separate report earlier this year, NHTSA said there’s “relatively little research” backing the idea that THC concentration in the blood can be used to determine impairment, again calling into question laws in several states that set “per se” limits for cannabinoid metabolites.
“Several states have determined legal per se definitions of cannabis impairment, but relatively little research supports their relationship to crash risk,” that report says. “Unlike the research consensus that establishes a clear correlation between [blood alcohol content] and crash risk, drug concentration in blood does not correlate to driving impairment.”
Similarly, a Department of Justice (DOJ) researcher said in February that states may need to “get away from that idea” that marijuana impairment can be tested based on the concentration of THC in a person’s system.
“If you have chronic users versus infrequent users, they have very different concentrations correlated to different effects,” Frances Scott, a physical scientist at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences under DOJ, said.
That issue was also examined in a recent federally funded study that identified two different methods of more accurately testing for recent THC use that accounts for the fact that metabolites of the cannabinoid can stay present in a person’s system for weeks or months after consumption.
Back in 2022, Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) sent a letter to the Department of Transportation (DOT) and NHTSA seeking an update on the status of a federal report into testing THC-impaired drivers. The department was required to complete the report under a large-scale infrastructure bill that President Joe Biden (D) signed, but it missed that deadline and is unclear how much longer it will take.
Last summer, a congressional report for a Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) bill said that the House Appropriations Committee “continues to support the development of an objective standard to measure marijuana impairment and a related field sobriety test to ensure highway safety.”
A study published in 2019 concluded that those who drive at the legal THC limit—which is typically between two to five nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood—were not statistically more likely to be involved in an accident compared to people who haven’t used marijuana.
Separately, the Congressional Research Service in 2019 determined that while “marijuana consumption can affect a person’s response times and motor performance … studies of the impact of marijuana consumption on a driver’s risk of being involved in a crash have produced conflicting results, with some studies finding little or no increased risk of a crash from marijuana usage.”
Another study from 2022 found that smoking CBD-rich marijuana had “no significant impact” on driving ability, despite the fact that all study participants exceeded the per se limit for THC in their blood.
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