Thank you for continuing the public discussion on House Bill 110, the legislation designed to legalize and commercialize the recreational use of marijuana in Delaware.
We agree that the issue should be publicly discussed and debated.
We know marijuana use only increases after a state legalizes recreational use. We know that people drive high. Marijuana impairs psychomotor skills and cognitive functions, including reaction time, distance perception, lane tracking, motor coordination, and attention span. Here in Delaware, we already see a problem with drugged driving on our roads, where over half of the DUI blood samples tested in 2016 screened positive for marijuana.
What should guide our approach to this issue is science and data - combined with well-reasoned public safety and societal impact learnings from other states that have legalized recreational marijuana.
AAA opposes the commercialization of marijuana for recreational use because of its negative traffic safety implications and the current challenges in discerning and addressing marijuana-impaired driving.
Jim Lardear
AAA Mid-Atlantic