Arrests and citations for driving under the influence of marijuana in Colorado were down 33.2 percent in the first three months of 2017 compared to the same time period last year, the Denver Post reports.
According to the Colorado State Patrol, 155 people were cited for marijuana-use-only impairment while driving from January to March of 2017; in comparison, 232 were cited from January to March of 2016. Fifty people were cited for alcohol and marijuana use over the same time period in 2017, compared with 69 from last year.
But Colorado officials remain concerned about the 55 percent of Colorado marijuana users who said in a survey that they believe it’s safe to drive while high. Fifty percent of the people surveyed who used marijuana in the past 30 days also said they’d driven while buzzed.
“We’re still troubled by fact that marijuana users are still telling us they routinely drive high,” Colorado Department of Transportation spokesman Sam Cole told the Post. “We’re pleased with the awareness, but we’re not so pleased with the behaviors that are actually happening.”
The Colorado State Patrol also seemed hesitant to celebrate the decrease. “Are the citations going down? Yeah, but is the number of people using marijuana and then driving going down? I don’t know how to quantify that,” Nate Reid, a CSP spokesman, told the Post. “This is just after the officer stop. This isn’t post-conviction or after they may have been arrested.”
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