Dells Extreme World operator charged in accident smoked pot three days earlier

If they did a full tox screen, does it make him more negligent? Would a tox screen fix her neck? Does knowing that he told the truth change the facts? Does finding out he lied about his drug use change the facts?

The police have done their job. They've got the person responsible for injuring the girl and have built a case for the prosecution to do their job. What more would you like them to do?

Give him some cocaine!

If the tox screen is positive for other substances, of course it makes him more negligent. Right now his defense team will argue the manufacturer is the negligent party and he holds minimal to no responsibility. Might be a decent enough argument to get him off or at least reduce the punishment.

Find out he is a meth user, and the case changes. Negligence becomes much easier to prove. The punishment phase of the trial is probably a little more severe. When a suspect already admits he uses illegal drugs, seems logical that there is proper cause to test for types and quantities.

You tell me that if your were this child's parents you would not be pissed at the police? A simple blood draw could be the difference in this guy walking, or serving a lot of time.

ApolloAndy said:
dj, your argument is that the law against pot is not objective, but is a result of a corrupt agenda. Can't someone say the exact same things about speed limits and can't Rockin' Raceway man say the same thing about ride safety issues?

If I'm at home smoking a joint, no one is endangered by that. If I go 115 mph in a school zone, it's quite likely that someone is in added danger as a result.

I know you can produce studies to "prove" that there is no harmful effect from pot and other seems to be able to produce studies that "prove" that there is...

The only thing anyone has posted (that I noticed) with regard to the dangers have to do with smoking marijuana (which some studies show causes lung cancer, but again, smoking is not the only delivery method) and the reduced cognitive function as a result of heavy, long-term use. And that reduced cognitive function is something that happens with a lot of things, including alcohol.

..."120 MPH on the freeway man") might say is "objectively harmless" is probably not to you.

Not trying to be a jerk, but I don't think you have a firm grasp on what "objective" means. It's objective to say that someone driving 120 mph puts others in greater danger than if that person were driving, say, 20 mph. We can observe that a head-on collision of two vehicles at a total relative speed of 140 mph (car A 120 mph due north, car B 20 mph due south) would cause more damage than a head-on collision of two vehicles at a total relative speed of 40 mph.

djDaemon said:
What sense does it make to go through all the effort to synthesize something that exists naturally and grows wonderfully right here in the US? There's no logic in that.

Are you a doctor now? Would you take naturally grown acetaminophen too (if there were such a thing), with no knowledge of the variations in volume, concentration and potency? Something tells me your liver would be pissed.

OK, so alcohol and tobacco are legal, and I'm fairly certain you consume alcohol, which suggests you're OK with both the legality of alcohol and social impact resulting from your consumption of it.

You're putting words into my mouth. I suggested no such thing. I'm not the one making a case for weed by using the case of alcohol. Alcohol is in fact heavily regulated already, and you need to be 21 to consume it.

...from a corrupt agenda. Again, weed isn't illegal because it makes bad stuff happen. It's illegal because of corruption.

Come on, really? What agenda is that?

Go research how many people have died as a result of consuming marijuana.

Well since it's illegal, I suppose that deterrent is working, eh?

But you still cannot say marijuana use or the legality of the use of it is right or wrong and be objective. That is an impossibility.

djDaemon said:

Not trying to be a jerk, but I don't think you have a firm grasp on what "objective" means.

Trust me, I understand what the word means. I just don't think it's at all useful in this case. (And we could also philosophically debate whether anything is objective. As Gonch loves to point out, for a long time the world was "objectively" flat and the Newton's laws of mechanics were "objectively" correct).

When there is conflicting evidence and varying opinion from different members of the scientific community (all of which have their own *subjective* biases) I don't understand how you can be so certain that one side is correct and then call that side the "objective" one and at the same time, dismiss the other sides as corrupt and subjective.

You certainly can objectively state marijuana use is illegal. It is. No ambiguity there.

You can subjectively argue whether it should be illegal, whether the Federal Government should enforce it, etc.

Another way the lack of a tox screen can affect this case is from the manufacturer's defense. Their defense team will now argue that their product is safe when operated correctly. I would not be shocked if there is a product manual that explicitly states that the operator be of sound mind and not under the influence. They could beat home this point to the jury since the operator has already admitted he uses mind-altering substances.

That tox screen might have cleared the operator, thereby eliminating such a defense. By not taking basic care with the investigation, there a now many more opportunities to skirt justice than there should have been. I don't necessarily believe such arguments should or will succeed. But they are certainly reasonable defenses to argue.

Jeff said:
Are you a doctor now? Would you take naturally grown acetaminophen too (if there were such a thing), with no knowledge of the variations in volume, concentration and potency? Something tells me your liver would be pissed.

I'd take a perfectly-safe, completely-natural alternative pain reducer, if such a thing existed. Absolutely.

OK, so alcohol and tobacco are legal, and I'm fairly certain you consume alcohol, which suggests you're OK with both the legality of alcohol and social impact resulting from your consumption of it.

You're putting words into my mouth. I suggested no such thing. I'm not the one making a case for weed by using the case of alcohol. Alcohol is in fact heavily regulated already, and you need to be 21 to consume it.

Well, I am making that case. :)

I'm not suggesting weed should be part of the preschool lunch program. You're avoiding the meat of the discussion.

Come on, really? What agenda is that?

Harry Anslinger, an up-and-coming politician wanted to make a name for himself. So, he started spreading anti-weed propaganda in the 1930's. Not-coincidentally, the man who helped spread this propaganda was a man named William Randolph Hearst, who you probably know was a powerful newspaper magnate. The thing is, Hearst was also heavily invested in the lumber industry. Because hemp represented a viable competitor to his businesses, Hearst published Anslinger's fabricated (and heavily racial) accounts of how awful marijuana was. In addition, Hearst's "yellow journalism" style was helped by Anslinger's unfounded claims of how evil Mexicans (and pretty much all brown people) were smoking pot, which made them rapists and murderers of white women.

On top of that, the Secretary of the Treasury at the time, Andrew W. Mellon, was heavily invested in DuPont, a company that just so happened to produce synthetic materials whose most viable competition was hemp. In fact, hemp was kicking these synthetic material's synthetic asses in the market... until they decided to create the "Marihuana Tax Act of 1937", which effectively killed hemp as a competitor to paper and synthetic materials.

What's more, the Act was created behind closed doors and against the objections of the AMA, who wanted further testing to verify the outlandish claims made by Anslinger, such as:

By the tons it is coming into this country — the deadly, dreadful poison that racks and tears not only the body, but the very heart and soul of every human being who once becomes a slave to it in any of its cruel and devastating forms…. Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him…

Well since it's illegal, I suppose that deterrent is working, eh?

No, it's absolutely not working. Just like alcohol prohibition didn't work.

Marijuana is the third most popular recreational drug in America (behind only alcohol and tobacco), and has been used by nearly 100 million Americans. According to government surveys, some 25 million Americans have smoked marijuana in the past year, and more than 14 million do so regularly...

Marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. Around 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning. Similarly, more than 400,000 deaths each year are attributed to tobacco smoking. By comparison, marijuana is nontoxic and cannot cause death by overdose.

source

Further, look at this chart showing the lethality of commonly-used drugs. See alcohol way over there on the middle-right? OK, now look on the lower-left.

djDaemon said:
Further, look at this chart showing the lethality of commonly-used drugs. See alcohol way over there on the middle-right? OK, now look on the lower-left.

I love that Caffeine is on that chart.

Caffeine was *this close* to being made illegal under the same laws as Cocaine.

It wasn't though and now kids ingest it.

Had it been made illegal, imagine the conversations we would be having about ride ops being 'hopped up' on Caffeine. :)

Caffeine turns your children into mindless velocity zombies, intent on doing things very rapidly!

:)

So it turns out that caffeine is the reason I became addicted to naturally-produced adnreline inside my own body? I just knew all those Diet Cokes had to have an effect. There's your "gateway drug" right there! ;)

Seriously though, if I drink and drive and injure someone, I'm reposonsible for my actions - impairment is not a defense (unless you're Joran Van Der Sloot and out killing innocent women). The same argument SHOULD hold true for marijuana....except there's not an easy way to detect "current intoxication" the way there is with alcohol.

Also wanted to note that it is a little inaccurate to say in one sweeping generalization that "marijuana usage is illegal". There is a list of states in which certain individuals CAN legally consume the product.

Finally, stating that marijuana is "harmless" is just as ludicrous as stating that it can lead to evils like dancing and fornication...but SCIENCE is hard to come by when there is no funding that comes without a prior agenda. So, right now, as far as actual facts, we have to rely on whatever studies come from Asian and European nations that have at least decided that knowledge beats propaganda.

rollergator said:Finally, stating that marijuana is "harmless" is just as ludicrous as stating that it can lead to evils like dancing and fornication...

Well, yeah, but nothing is "harmless". There's probably even a lethal toxicity level for peanut butter.

gator:

Not a weed expert, never tried it. But I was under the impression that under Federal law, it is all illegal. Some state laws allow it, but Federal Law trumps the States. Now will they enforce it? Am I wrongly informed?

dj:

I appreciate your attempt to educate. As Jeff said earlier there are means to change the law. If you educate enough people to your cause, maybe the law will change. There is a big difference between advocating for a law change, versus breaking the law because you disagree with it. Your line of reasoning, no matter how strongly you believe it, could be used as justification to break any law.

For the record I am for drug legalization even though I have never done any. But I'm not for breaking the law. I agree with your libertarian viewpoints. I just can't support actively thwarting the law to prove a point.

None of this changes the fact that the ride operator should have been tested.

Aamilj said:
Your line of reasoning, no matter how strongly you believe it, could be used as justification to break any law.

That's untrue. My reasoning is that if breaking a particular law doesn't negatively impact those around me (and unless you've got Twinkies on your person, you won't be negatively impacted), I see no reason to avoid breaking it.

The majority of laws do not fit that criteria.

Aamilj said:
None of this changes the fact that the ride operator should have been tested.

I do agree with that, I just don't think him not being tested after admitting prior use hurts one case or helps another. I think negligence is pretty easy to prove (especially with his statements) and even that proving the manufacturer responsible for producing a dangerously flawed product will be easy*.

I trust the police's judgement in this case.

* - Just because a driver is drunk doesn't mean Toyota isn't responsible for not providing working brakes on their car.

For what it's worth (not too much) - the societal harm brought about by alochol consumption is absolutely staggering. However, we allow it in large part because it is heavily regulated and an enormous revenue-generator. Can't help but think the same COULD be true for marijuana.

Also, the potential health benefits as well as potential health risks of alcohol and marijuana repectively should be taken into consideration before making sweeping laws prohibiting their use. Since that was not the case when either of those DRUGS was prohibited - it makes us look a little more puritanical than science-based in our logic as a nation.

Lastly - Aamilj...yes, there are Federal laws prohibiting possession and dispensing. But the Feds, even before Obama, decided to mostly leave it as a States' rights issue since there is such strong debate happening. I'd be surprised if the budget-hawks in CA don't end up changing the state's moniker sometime soon: "The (Acapulco) Golden State" ;)

rollergator said:
For what it's worth (not too much) - the societal harm brought about by alochol consumption is absolutely staggering. However, we allow it in large part because it is heavily regulated and an enormous revenue-generator. Can't help but think the same COULD be true for marijuana.

Couldn't have said it any better myself.

(which is why I didn't even try :) )

rollergator said:
"The (Acapulco) Golden State" ;)

Oooh, I like it! :)