This seems like an intentionally misleading title, since they don't mention that the study was for one county (Montgomery County) in Ohio, which is basically just Dayton, OH and surrounding rural area - < 600k people.

I'm sure you can pick other counties in the US which have either very high representation of THC users or very low representations. Without knowing how other counties score in terms of driver fatalities and THC, this is not really very useful.

To me it sounds like an effort to paint THC as big and scary. But in my experience living in a few large cities, weed is rare - but lots of people go out, drink, and drive home one or more times per week.

ScienceDaily goes even further by rounding up to 50% and burying the location halfway down the summarization.

"Nearly half of drivers killed in crashes had THC in their blood THC-impaired driving deaths are soaring, and legalization hasn’t slowed the trend. Date: October 5, 2025 Source: American College of Surgeons Summary: Over 40% of fatal crash victims had THC levels far above legal limits, showing cannabis use before driving remains widespread. The rate didn’t drop after legalization, suggesting policy changes haven’t altered risky habits. Experts warn that the lack of public awareness around marijuana’s dangers behind the wheel is putting lives at risk."

Unless they publish who funded the study, I'm skeptical that the alcohol industry might be involved. It's absolutely in their best interest to paint marijuana as the devil (and take attention away from alcohol).

Obviously nobody should be driving with any impairment, but people do - driving tired, texting, even talking to passengers and turning their heads to look at the passengers while they talk! (Really, why??? I see people doing this all the time.)

To give some statistical context, as of 2023, about 16.11% of people in the US have used cannabis in the past year; per that same dataset, about 16.53% of Ohio residents. [1] Given that Ohio’s usage metrics align closely with the national mean, I think it's fair to use the state as a proxy for broader domestic trends.

Per more Pew Research data, also from 2023, Ohio seems to have an average, if not a less than average, concentration of cannabis dispensaries, compared to other states where CBD products were legal. Montgomery County, OH is located in the bottom-left quarter of Ohio, and sits in a region with lower dispensary density than many comparable U.S. districts. [2]

Given that usage metrics mirror the national mean despite a lower-than-average retail presence, I think this dataset is a pretty fair "middle america" benchmark.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/723822/cannabis-use-with... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/29/most-amer...

> I'm skeptical that the alcohol industry might be involved.

So you don't think that the alcohol industry is involved?

You think 40% of the people in that area have THC in their system?

Of course you don't. So why make this argument?

Are you funded by Big Cannabis™?

You sound like the people who were outraged when drinking and driving was first banned. They had all sorts of made up logic to get around wanting to consistently being a hazard to others.

Upvoted!

I’ve applied this same rule when reading news or watching tv - if your immediate reaction is shock, surprise, or anger, think of a list of organisations who would monetarily benefit [1] from that article or show etc.

Nobody does a news story for the fun of it unless it genuinely IS news, but it’s been shown [2] that over 70% is PR pieces trying to make you think one way or another.

[1] money talks, and bullshit walks

[2] Australia’s Media Watch ran a piece about this a few years ago

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