Media Release 31 July 2020
The SayNopeToDope Campaign is warning that legalisation of cannabis will make our roads more unsafe, and roadside drug testing will do little to mitigate these harms.

“The rights of people to be safe on the road outweighs the right to get high. If a person has THC in their system, we don’t want them on the road endangering other drivers and families. The international research is clear on the harm that legalisation of cannabis will bring to our roads,” says SayNopeToDope campaign spokesperson Aaron Ironside.

In Canada, a quarter of Canadians aged 18 to 34 have driven after consuming cannabis or been a passenger in a vehicle driven by someone under the influence of cannabis, in a new survey released in December (2019) by the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA). 86% of young Canadians said it is important to find alternative ways to get home when they drink alcohol, but only 70% of them believe it is important to do so after using cannabis.

In a study done in New Zealand by six Australian health researchers, it found that habitual users of marijuana have about 10 times the risk of car crash injury or death compared to infrequent or non-users. Those users who crashed had smoked marijuana within three hours of their accidents.”

A study in 2017 by the University of Waikato found that nearly half of Kiwi cannabis users don’t think twice about driving after smoking, and that while nearly three-quarters (73.6%) of drinkers had made a decision not to drive after drinking, only 57% of cannabis smokers had made the same call.

And while many factors contribute to pedestrian fatalities, it turns out that US states that legalised marijuana for medical and/or recreational use saw a 16.4 percent surge in such deaths in the first six months of 2017 compared to the first six months of 2016, while nonlegal states saw a drop of 5.8 percent in pedestrian fatalities over the same time.

Since recreational marijuana was legalised in Colorado, marijuana related traffic deaths increased 151%, more than doubling from 55 in 2013 to 138 people killed in 2017. The percent of traffic fatalities that involved drivers intoxicated with marijuana in Colorado rose by 86% between 2013 and 2017, with over one-fifth of all traffic fatalities involving a driver testing positive for marijuana by 2017.

According to AAA, Washington State experienced a doubling in drugged-driving fatalities in the years following legalisation. The number of fatally injured drivers positive for marijuana in the state more than doubled following marijuana legalisation, reaching 17% in 2014. The latest AAA Foundation research (2020) found that between 2008 and 2012 – the five-year period before the drug was legal – an estimated 8.8% of Washington drivers involved in fatal crashes were positive for THC. That rate rose to 18% between 2013 and 2017. In Massachusetts, marijuana is the most common drug found in drivers involved in fatal Massachusetts crashes. Cannabis was found in 175 — 31% — of the 572 drivers involved in fatal crashes from 2013 to 2017, according to the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.

Nick Leggett who is the CEO of the Road Transport Forum recently wrote in transporttalk: “Already the number of people being killed by drug impaired drivers on New Zealand roads is higher than those killed by drivers above the legal alcohol limit. There have been years and years of media campaigns to stop people drinking and driving, but still they do it. So, what is planned to educate people on taking drugs and driving? Higher risk on the roads automatically means higher insurance premiums across the board – insurance is risk priced and you pay on probability… We don’t want New Zealand’s truck drivers, who are just going about their work delivering all New Zealanders the goods they need, to be the casualty of poorly thought out laws.” 

READ MORE https://saynopetodope.org.nz/driving-stoned/

Media Release 30 July 2020
The Say Nope To Dope campaign says that the supporters of cannabis legalisation are wilfully misleading the public when they pretend to be concerned about patients and the use and availability of medicinal cannabis.

“There has been a deafening silence on the drawing out of the ballot of Dr Shane Reti’s medicinal cannabis private members bill which improves access for patients. The government has ignored it, the Greens have said nothing, and the Drug Foundation and Helen Clark are nowhere to be seen, This shows the true agenda of the Yes campaigners for primarily the recreational legalisation of cannabis,” says spokesperson Aaron Ironside.

“Drug advocates have used medicinal cannabis as justification for legalising cannabis – yet when a bill is drawn which could further help achieve their goal, their silence is deafening,”

“This is evidence that their campaign is fraudulent and that they are wilfully misleading the public on this issue. The problem that they have is that if they supported this bill, it would undermine their ultimate goal of legalising cannabis for recreational use. But medicinal cannabis is their smokescreen for misleading the public on the real desire for promoting a yes vote for legalisation.”

“We’re calling on the Yes campaign to drop the façade of their desire to help patients. Their focus is purely on the right of people to use drugs for recreational reasons.”

Media Release 28 July 2020
The Say Nope To Dope campaign says that despite the sales pitch from the Drug Foundation that employers are overreacting and Andrew Little claiming that cannabis use is already ‘widely available’, employers have every reason to be concerned about attempts to legalise the recreational use of cannabis.

In the US, marijuana legalisation has had serious ramifications for businesses. Increased marijuana availability and use has increased the number of employees testing positive for marijuana in the workforce.

Marijuana is the most commonly detected substance and has the highest drug positivity rate among all other tested substances across the majority of industry sectors in the U.S. (Quest Diagnostics, 2017). Among the top-ranking industries for the highest rates of positive marijuana testing, transportation and warehousing was number one with 33.3%. Meanwhile the construction industry had an average of 26.7% positive marijuana testing (Quest Diagnostics, 2018).

“Contrary to the Drug Foundation’s claims about Canada where legalisation has been only recent and good research not readily available on trends, in the three-year period following legalisation in Colorado and Washington, positive oral-fluid test results for marijuana use increased almost 75%, from 5.1% to 8.9%. Marijuana urine test results in Washington and Colorado are now double the national average,” says spokesperson Aaron Ironside.

One in four marijuana users who are employed admit to getting high at work within the past year, according to a new survey of cannabis consumers in Washington, Oregon and Colorado, three states where recreational weed is legal. Workforce marijuana-positivity rates in all “legal” states but one (Alaska) are above the national average. For example, 2018 positivity rates in Maine (5.0%), Oregon (4.3%), Nevada (4.0%), Massachusetts (3.3%), Colorado (3.0%), California (2.5%), and Washington (2.4%) are higher than the national average (2.3%) (Quest Diagnostics, 2019). Most states that have legalised marijuana show an increasing trend in positivity rates.

Insurance claims have become a growing concern among companies in US states that have legalised marijuana because if marijuana use is allowed or drug testing ignored, employers are at risk of liability claims when a marijuana-related injury or illness occurs onsite. Studies consistently show marijuana users have significantly lower levels of commitment to their work than non-users, and are absent more often. Even when controlling for alcohol use, pot users are 106% more likely to have missed at least one day of work in the last month because they “just didn’t want to be there.”

Ironically, on the NZ Drug Foundation’s website, their fact sheet on driving while high says “For regular smokers, the news is worse. A new study shows that chronic, heavy users of cannabis are not, as one might think, less impaired due to higher tolerance but in fact may be constantly impaired – even for some weeks after ceasing altogether.” (our emphasis added)

“Where there is more accessibility there will be an increase in use, whatever substance that is. When something is legal it is the ‘green’ light to use it with no consequences. This is why workplace drug testing acts as a deterrent from this unsafe behaviour.”

Media Release 27 July 2020
The Say Nope To Dope campaign says that the deafening silence on the drawing out of the ballot of Dr Shane Reti’s medicinal cannabis private members bill which improves access for patients shows the true agenda of the Yes campaigners for primarily the recreational legalisation of cannabis.

“Drug advocates like the Greens, the Drug Foundation and Helen Clark have used medicinal cannabis as justification for legalising cannabis – yet when a bill is drawn which could further help achieve their goal, their silence is deafening,” says spokesperson Aaron Ironside.

“This is evidence that their campaign is fraudulent. The problem that they have is that if they supported this bill, it would undermine their ultimate goal of legalising cannabis for recreational use. But medicinal cannabis is their smokescreen for misleading the public on the real desire for promoting a yes vote for legalisation.”

“We’re calling on the Yes campaign to drop the façade of their desire to help patients. Their focus is purely on the right of people to use drugs for recreational reasons.”

We support further quality research into the components of the marijuana plant for delivery via non-smoked forms, with products established as safe, effective and approved and listed by the Ministry of Health to be prescribed via their doctor – with appropriate funding and pricing for patients. Neurologists, palliative care and pain specialists should have a key role in this process.

“Ultimately, the medical profession should be dictating the direction of the medicinal cannabis debate, not marijuana advocates with a hidden agenda.”