Marijuana Vs. Alcohol: Which Is Worse For You?

We love those two places and we sure do. And then on the twenty two of May, we're gonna be in St. Louis, Missouri for the first time ever at the Pageant. And then another first for us is the next night May, we're gonna be in Cleveland, Ohio at the Ohio Theater. Dude, I'm very excited about both Cleveland and St. Louis because we wanted to add some new shows. We had get a lot of support in Ohio that we know for sure, and got family there and I

just can't wait. But wait, wait, there's there's more. We're going back to the Gothic Theater in Englewood, Colorado, a k A. Right outside Denver. We're gonna be there June uh and it's going to be nuts. We're gonna have a great time at all these so we want you to come see us. You can go to the Wilbur dot com. You can go to ticket fly for the d C show. You can go to ticket Master for

the St. Louis show. Search us on playhouse square dot org for the Ohio Theater Cleveland show, and then lastly a x S dot com to search for us at the Gothic Theater and we will see you guys very soon. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh

Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry Roland. And this is stuff you should know because you put the three of us together, roll us up in the paper, add a match to the mix, you've got one great podcast. Or throw us all in a sniffed ter okay, swirl us around and then we're a an appartif that's nice? And why not just why why decide? Why choose one over the other, right, because then we would kill each other in a car. Yeah, we would, we would. Well,

let's start. Let's start legitimately here, Chuck, first of all, how are you great? Good? Okay, I am too, But let's start even more legitimately than that. Let's get in the way back machine. Okay, I live in this thing. Emily kicked me out, so I've been I've been living in the way back machine for a few weeks. Now. It's with your dog, just one of them. Though she only gave me one of the dogs. It's kind of

gave me in here, you know. It is um Okay, Well, we're in Chuck's repurposed way back sheet and we're just going just for a second, Chuck, we're going back to two thousand fourteen, and we're going to go to New York City and we're going to buy a New Yorker magazine. Okay, now we can go back to two thous eighteen. Okay, and we're gonna flip open this New Yorker magazine. Oh look, Chuck, it's an interview with then President Barack Obama. Do you

remember him? Do so? In two thousand fourteen, Obama gave this interview to New Yorker, and he really kind of created a bit of a stir. I mean, since he first ran in two thousand and eight, everybody knew he smoked pot. There are pictures of it. Like he never

he never denied it. He admitted a smoking pot. But this interview in two thousand fourteen really just changed things because in it, Obama said that he did not believe that his pot smoking was anything really worse than his his bad cigarette habit, and that he he doesn't think he didn't think that it was more dangerous an alcohol, which is really saying something because I mean, like you know, as teenagers have been saying for decades and decades now,

it's crazy that something like alcohol can be bought like at any corner store, at drug stores in some states stores and and that like you can drink it as long as you're twenty one and get in your car and drive up to a certain limit. But pod is totally illegal in most states. Still, um, and Obama was saying kind of throwing down the gauntlet, saying, you know, I don't in a very roundabout way, he was saying,

I don't. I don't know that that's necessarily right, that pots should be illegal and you should be able to buy alcohol anywhere because pot's not as bad as booze, yeah, which was man, times have really changed in our you know, in the past like twenty years, because I remember when Clinton it was such a scandal that he had inhaled and he didn't inhale. Well he the thing came out and he said, well I tried to and I couldn't and a liar, Well, who knows that may have been true.

I just think my reaction was, well, that just means you're super lame. You don't know what you're doing, Bill Um. But it was just such a scandal. And then I mean, here we are now where you know, state after state is is legalizing recreational marijuana. Yeah, which, yeah, is really interesting to see that change happen, not even like medicinal marijuana anymore. That was like the Gateway legislation. Now it's like, straight up, you want to smoke pot to get high

just for fun, you can do that. And let's see, Chuck. So it started with Washington and um Colorado, right, I think were they the first two. They were back in two thousand fourteen, and just since two thousand fourteen, you've now got Oregon, California, Vermont, Washington, d C. Nevada, Massachusetts, Maine, Alaska, and Washington State. Yeah, it was the state so nice.

I said it twice. Or maybe they just super like like when you you reaffirm your wedding vowels, maybe they doubled down a few as Leonard and said this is so great, we just want to like legalize it again. I think they did do that in Washington. We were there recently for live shows, and I can tell you they definitely renewed their vows with pots. Yeah, we were in San Francisco. Uh, Colorado, or we're gonna be in Colorado and then Washington and Oregon. So and we're going

to Massachusetts. Uh, we just need to hit Nevada and we're going to d c yah, Nevada, Maine in Alaska and it will be the stuff you should know up in Smoke Tour. We need T shirts for that one. Not that we would ever do that, no, no, but

we could still make T shirts that suggest it. Yeah, and my any joke on stage in San Francisco, we were there literally the weekend that the first recreational pot shops opened, and the joke was San Francisco day after exactly like San Francisco was the day before that killed They loved it. So the upshide of all of this is that with all these states like legalizing marijuana, the comparison between pot and alcohol has kind of become less of a like a stoner conversation, like it's actually a

legitimate academic discussion. Nowadays, there's a lot of different things that come into play. Before it was kind of like, well, ultimately it doesn't matter because Uncle Sam, well actually Tricky Dick says that it's illegal. So it's illegal, So it doesn't really matter if it's worse for you or not. It's way worse to be put into jail um than it is to to be tipsy off of alcohol and maybe risk curosis of the liver. Right, So that ended

all conversations there. But as that, as that conversation under has kind of fallen away, the conversation has kind of opened up. So I guess what we're doing here today is doing the best we can at putting the conversation to rest, even though now that we've dived into it, we've seen that the conversation is very far from being put to rest. Yeah, and this one's gonna there are a lot of stats. It's very sad heavy episode, which

is fun. But um, the first thing we should point out is that in terms of marijuana, because it was illegal, there's hasn't been a lot of funding throne at studies over the years because, like you said, it's like, why bother, it's illegal, We're not gonna put our resources towards studying it. Now they kind of have to. But the long and short of it is we we are still and will be for many years gathering data on what pot does

to the body, how dangerous it is. But early results clearly indicate at least in the short term, and we're gonna run the gamut here, but in the short term, you can start a night out having fun, drinking and end up dead hours later just from the alcohol. Yeah I'm not saying by getting in a car or jumping off a building, like all those things can happen too, but you can drink yourself to death in hours. Yeah,

they're they're so. The CDC put out like a very famous statistic now, um that said that every year in the United States, about eighty eight thousand people die from alcohol every year, and that's all alcohol related deaths like liver disease, car crashes all that, but about half of those are from binge drinking, which is drinking usually for men about five or more drinks, and for women, I think it's like three or more drinks within two hours or something like that, and then and then going on,

and once you start to get to that point, you start to run an increasing risk of alcohol poisoning. Yeah, I mean it's your he cannot process alcohol fast enough like you can. You can drink past that amount, Like I said, such that, I mean you hear sad stories about the the kid in college who literally died from drinking one night. Yep. Uh. That cannot be said of marijuana. Um, well,

it depends. Well, it doesn't depend, No, it does. I think it's literally impossible to consume as much marijuana as you would have to consume over a period of hours to die from it. Okay, yes, yes, absolutely, you're right. You're right, it doesn't depend. That's that's true. Like, and there's a lot of people who point to that statistic where they basically say thousand people die a year um from alcohol, zero people die a year from marijuana. That's

not necessarily true. But if you're talking about overdosing, yes, yeah, absolutely, like, people don't overdose and die from marijuana. Many have tried. Sure, it's especially Cheech and chong, but they the the amount of th HC you would have to ingest is so um so much more than you could possibly take under normal circumstances that you're just not going to So like,

what are the numbers here to figure this out? Well, your statman, I just want to set up that we used High Times as a source for this episode because we're like, okay, so how much how much th HC is in pot? And how much does that break down to depending on whether you smoke a bowl or smoke a joint or eat an edible And we said, well, who would know more than anyone else, And it turns out it's High Times. Yeah. So here's the thing with

Pot two. It really varies according to who you are, how much you typically ingest, how strong the pot is. But are we gonna go with this? These numbers here th HC, which I think is fairly average these days, which is per high, but that's normal. It's a normal amount of I think, uh, you you that's about a hundred and eighty milligrams program of marijuana, right, And if people don't know. T HC is the the active ingredient

that gets you high in the marijuana plant. Yeah, and what is the delta nine catra hydro cannab at all? Oh you just read the tattoo on your forum. It's misspelled, as you can see. I was wonder what that was. Uh. Here's the thing, though, You lose th HC when it's burned about uh And trust me, marijuana users have tried to lower that number um as much as possible for the and to some success, like supposedly with the vaporiors or you lose a lot less because you're not actually

burning the THC. Right, Yeah, I mean they are all manner of ways to ingest marijuana now, um, partially because of I mean there always were, but partially because of this recreational um. And I always wondered what that would look like if it was legalized, because you know, I've been Amsterdam and stuff, and I thought, was it going to be like that where you have marijuana in jars and like a they call them bud tenders, which is so stupid, uh? Or I thought, well, no, it's America.

I bet you anything. It's gonna be like a cigarette pack that's highly manufactured, but just joints, and it turns out it's uh, it's sort of not either. I mean it's it's very on the up and up. Like I've been into one of those stores just to look around, and it's, um, it's like visiting a any coffee or tea shop. You know, it's all very it's it's not just dudes with with a bag that they throw into another bag. You know, they pull it out of their stock. I guess, So, I guess it's my way of saying

it's um. The recreational pot shops that I've seen have been very professional, and everything is very packaged and and it's just like any other commodity. So did you walk in and go are you? Are you the bud tender? I'm from I'm from Hotlanta. I'm doing a story for a podcast. So so okay. So, depending on how you ingest the pot, especially whether you're burning it or not,

you're gonna lose some THHC. But if you burn it, you lose about So if you have a hundred and eighty milligram per gram th HC, it's suddenly down to what seventy two milligrams per gram, and if you're smoking a half a gram joint. Let's say you're even smoking a one gram joint and you're getting seventy two milligrams of th HC from that joint, you're still immensely shy. And on the level of orders of magnitude different um of how much it would take to overdose on on

th HC. Yeah, I mean, I think the number in here is a minimum of like a hundred and fifty joints you would have to smoke by yourself over a very short period of time. Yeah, because so you're you're getting seventy two milligrams in that joint of th HC, but it would take something like at least fifteen grams of th HC to to overdose. So yes, you would have to smoke hundreds of joints and basically a day to start to build up enough th HC in your

bloodstream that you overdose fatally. I'm trying to picture the study, like the being behind the one way glass and the guy p and like, well then he is this, and they're like and ten and he's like I can do it anymore. Like that's why you would not overdose. There's just no way. Yeah, for sure, I would imagine you'd fall asleep or get bored or forget what you were doing or whatever. I think it'd be more likely that you would have to eat like a triple layer cake

made entirely of marijuana. So I'm glad you said that because that definitely edibles are different, and they're different in a couple of ways. One way they're different is that they don't burn. You're not burning the th HC, so you're not necessarily losing a bunch of it. Do You also can eat more of it than say you're smoking of it as far as th HC is concerned, So you can still you can definitely increase like how much, um, how much th HC you're getting by eating it rather

than smoking it. But the other thing about edibles is that you actually your body does something differently with them, and that is that when you're smoking marijuana, you're introducing th HC and it's normal form from your lungs to your heart to your brain. Th HC can cross that blood brain barrier. But you know, it's not the greatest at it. It's kind of hit or miss, right when you ingest t HC where you eat it like an edible, it goes through your digestive system, and that th HC

is metabolized. It's broken down into the um by the liver and then set into the bloodstream. Well, what what the metabolized version does is it's much better at crossing the blood brain barrier. So you get a much more powerful high from eating an edible, and you get a higher dose of th HC even though it's this THHC metabolite. So eating edibles is different, and it is possible that it would bring you closer, statistically speaking, increase your risk of of coming near a fatal dose of th HC.

But again, still like that, the amount you would have to eat is ridiculously high. Yeah, And I think most of the cases of UM since recreational has been introduced, of oh my god, I have to go to the emergency room have been people that ate too too much pot. Yeah. And and also the other one of the other big

problems with edibles, well there's two of them. One is that people eat too much because it takes like hours to kick in and they're like, oh, I'm not feel anything, let me have four more, yeah, which is a real problem with those things. And then set. And we also kids tend to get into edibles more than they you know, find your your pot and roll a joint, which is dangerous because they have lower body mass. And and I would I mean they're fatal dose or whatever could cause

them health problems is much. It's a much lower threshold for a small kid, yeah for sure, which is you know, scary. Yeah, well yeah sure. Um. All right, well so we covered the O D aspect. Well do you want to take a break. All right, let's take a break. Let's try to decide. Let's take a break. We'll come right back after this. All right, all right, so we covered the O D thing. Like I said before the break, Um,

I feel like that's settled. Now that's subtle law. So UM, here's the other thing alcohol is that the way it reacts and interacts with other drugs is significantly more different

than marijuana. UM. Most people know this. But that's why they on your prescription bottles they say things like don't drink when you take this, because depending on what the drug is, UM, whether it's pain killers or um meds for your mental well being, UM, you can either end up having a higher dose of that or a lower dose depending on what it is how much you've had

to drink. And that's always scary because we've seen all over the place people accidentally overdosing by combining prescription drugs and alcohol. Yeah, I mean, like if you get a lower dose in its medicine you really need, that's Yeah,

it's just as bad. And it's it's because alcohol is either exciting all the enzymes in your liver and they metabolize the medicine faster than it's designed to be, so you get a big dose, or they hog all of the enzymes and the medicine just kind of passes through your liver unmetabolized and you don't get the dose you're looking for. Either way, it's not good for you. Yeah. And like this article that you put together points out, though it is you, we should mention that marijuana though,

can impair your coordination. So there is a risk of you know, just literally getting hurt because you're uncoordinated. Um. You may you may trip over your coffee table and fall into your couch or your papas on or your lava lamp. You know, you don't want to go head first into a lava lamp. No, that's bad. Um, I know we're making light, but seriously that that is a risk um or just you're you know, unprotected sex because your inhibitions are lowered. Although what the same can be

said for alcohol. Yes, that's absolutely true, and I think this article does say it, it's just in a different spot. But yeah, your judgment can be impaired to which can lead to all manner of indirect effects which might seem like, you know, that doesn't count, but actually they very much do count because you wouldn't have otherwise made those decisions if you hadn't been drunk or stoned. They count for sure.

So those are some of the short term health effects from drinking, you know, death, but there's um long term ones too that that come on. And this is where the uh that literature um or the lack of literature studying pot like really kind of comes into play. Because we've been studying alcohol and the effects of alcohol for so long now we have it pretty well licked that alcohol is really really bad for you if you drink heavily, but strangely kind of good for you if you drink

in moderate amounts. With pot We just we just don't we don't know. There hasn't been enough study. And part of the problem, like you're saying, is it was illegal, and since it was illegal, it was kind of difficult to get your hands on study participants because they, you know, I didn't want to tell you that they smoked pot. Maybe have that go on any kind of permanent record

or something. Yeah, I mean for alcohol, the obvious physical effects, it's stuff on your liver, and alcoholic liver disease is a real thing that can progress from early stages fibrosis to eventual liver cancer. UM. And they don't really know exactly the mechanism for why some people can drink heavily well into their old age and not have any liver damage UM or you know, maybe some liver damage but not die of liver cancer, and then other people are

much higher risk. They don't fully get that. I mean, it's just gotta be genetics, right. Anytime that comes up and they're like, well, you know, we have no idea why these people are subject to it and other people aren't. It's always it's gotta be genetics. Like Keith Richards alive, No medical science will never explain that he should totally donate his body. Yeah, oh yeah, for sure. Um yeah, he really should. Actually it's like a legitimate jokey thing

to say, but it's true. So um, so you've got alcohol messing with your liver um with pot, they're they're kind of like, okay, well, if you're a chronic pot user, what's what's the problem? Chronic pot user? Chronic chronic pot user.

I think that's the way you would say it. So with with um, a chronic pot user, And it's defined differently, which I think is another thing that kind of makes the literature on the topic kind of difficult to study too, is people I don't think there's a universal this is what a chronic pot user is. I think each study

defines it for itself. But for a long time, there was some literature that said that smoke pot lowers your sperm count, but almost all of those were from the seventies and eighties, and all these studies referred to pot as grass, so no one took them seriously at all, Right, But in two thousand and fifteen, there is a Danish study that that that really kind of updated the literature, and they found that there was a twenty eight percent decrease in sperm count among chronic pot smokers and they

define chronics pot smokers is um men who smoked more than one joint a week, which is that's there's a lot of people who smoke pot smoke more than one joy in a week. Okay, Okay, so there there. They have found a decrease in sperm production. That's definitely a thing. All right, Well there's the the psychological and mental health issues at stake two. Um, and again, you know, not as much literature as we need, like this show ten years from that would be very different. I think I think,

well we should revisit it ten years from now. I totally agree. Um. So yeah, even if we retire in five years, will come back ten years from now to do the marijuana one off special. It's like getting friends back together. That'd be cool. I get to be Rachel. Ah, you're always Rachel. I've got the haircut. So um, it's funny. The Omnibus podcast did an entire episode on the Rachel

so with mental health issues. Um. For a long time, they weren't really sure whether teenagers who had mental health health issues smoked pot to deal with it or maybe, um, like something like bipolar doesn't really come on until your mid teens. Anyway, maybe pot could trigger that or depression or something if it is laying dormant inside of you. But recently they have done a little more studying and they do think that it can um in your earlier

years exacerbate these mental health disorders. Yeah, if you are like predisposed, right, which is that's kind of a significant finding too, Although it makes sense intuitively because like when you are a teenager, your brain is still developing, and pot has been shown to to change your cognitive development, So it would make sense that if there's a a biological basis for some mental health issues like depression or bipolar schizophrenia, that it would it would stand a reason

that pot could have some effect on that. And they finally have said, yes, we we generally can see that that pot probably makes mental health or predisposition of mental health issues worse in adolescence, which is is sad. And it's significant too because at least in the US, um pot use peaks among kids who are age eighteen and then it starts to taper off or tapers off fully

by the mid twenties and most people. Yeah, so the the the majority of people who smoke pot in the US are teenagers, anyway, But these studies are starting to show that the last people who should be smoking pot are teenagers because it can affect their brain development make them less than sharp. Yeah, I wonder about those numbers. Do seem dubious to me? The eighteen of eighteen and taper off of mid twenty. Yeah, and I'm not just

thinking of Willie Nelson. Here's the results. For sure. You have to wait him differently because he smokes a lot of pot. That's what I hear um with Pott obviously, although things are a little bit different these days with like you said, vaporizing and edibles and stuff like that. But in the olden days when everybody just smoked it, um, bronchitis obviously in just various um long air passage issues

is sort of an obvious risk. Um. Although they are now thinking that the newest data says that marijuana smoke doesn't affect the body like tobacco smoke does, And they have no idea why now that this doesn't make sense to them, and they're like, well, they've started to wonder if pot has some sort of protective chemical in it. It's just kind of you know, it gives the lungs a glass of milk and tucks them in after after

it's done being passed through there. Well, yeah, and it's also tough because to do studies, like a lot of times people may also smoke cigarettes, who smoke marijuana regularly, um, and again with the illegality, it's just it's kind of tough to get good data on this, and then chuck um.

Pregnancy is another thing. You can kind of put pot in um alcohol head to head with pregnancy, and apparently neither one is particularly good, although the studies have are much clearer on alcohol being bad for pregnant women to drink than pot smoking. But there's again from the CDC, there's a pretty famous statistic that three point three million women are at risk in the US of exposing their

baby to alcohol. And what they're saying the point is is that even if you um drink just in a few first few weeks of being pregnant UM, it can lead to what's called fetal alcohol spectrum disorders like cognitive, behavioral, physical development disorders from drinking alcohol while you're pregnant, even in the first few weeks. And so that three point three million women number, that's like binders full of women.

It um It basically says that is the number of women in the US the CD estimates have stopped using birth control, but haven't stopped using haven't stopped drinking, So those two things could conceivably cross over for a couple of weeks and which could lead to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. And they're saying like, despite you know what you hear that, you know a glass of wine isn't isn't bad for you? Or every once a while or something while you're pregnant.

Apparently the literature combined says no, there's really no safe level of alcohol to drink while you're pregnant. Well, here's the deal is they don't fully know. Like it did some digging, because I know outside of the United States there's is generally a more relaxed attitude, at least in some countries. Um It says here that's uh. This is from an NPR article UH two thousand fifteen study found the alcohol consumption range from UH in Australia, New Zealand,

Ireland and the UK. UH. Sometimes it was just like a glass of champagne at a special event. Sometimes it was a glass of wine, and UH once a night or once a week in the third trimester. Sometimes it was twenty ccs of golden grain injected into their neck um. So this one group did uh Luisa Zukolo, he's a health epidemiologist at Bristol, did a study recently and she found it consuming up to thirty two grams of alcohol per week two to three drinks was associated with a

ten percent increase risk of preterm birth. Only. Um, but here's the deal is in America they basically say, listen, we don't know for sure the threshold of exactly when and how and at what point in the pregnancy these effects can occur, but we do know this, if you don't drink, you have a chance of not having a risk of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. And why don't we all just air on the side of caution and wait

for the nine months. Well, but that's like a ticklers situation for us dudes to be in chuck because you know, it's it's a that's a real drag. Just just be like, just don't drink for nine months. I'm gonna go have a beer, but you don't drink, Okay, So husband's quit drinking as a show of support or cut I think that's that is definitely what should be done. Yeah, I mean I think people should do what it works best

for them. But um, sure, but if your wife is going to not if your wife or your sso is not going to drink um while she's pregnant, then you should not either. I hear your take on that, Okay, I just want to make sure. I'll say it again at the end, I'll circle back up. It might take his people should do it works best for them as a couple. Um. And I will also say this, when you adopt a kid, neither wanted, you have to stop drinking. Right.

Problems solved, just throwing it out there. Um. With marijuana during pregnancy, uh, they don't know for sure, um, exactly how that can affect cognitive impairment, but they do think that they have found some uh cognitive impairment results from fetal exposure. Right. But again they don't have like thresholds. Um. I mean, I've heard some doctors say we would rather a mother smoke a little pot if she has a lot of anxiety or potentially depression during her pregnancy, then

hopping on pills or having a drink. But again, that's not like some official doctor recommendation. It's very anecdotal. It's like an anonymous comment on from a doctor who will go on named so um. I also said that some some studies have found um, they have linked low birth weight to marijuana use, some pregnancy to So yeah, the upshot is is, what did you say the couples should do with what they think is best? Well, I mean

that's my role. Your rule is everyone follow my role? Yeah, right, So there's there's also a big distinction between pot and drinking chuck when it comes to crime, to like a big one. This is probably dobably the clearest line of

all and kind of funny. Yeah, well not funny, but the predicted result is a little amusing to me because they did find in two thousand fourteen that the average uh marijuana user, as far as partner violence intimate partner violence goes UM is actually lower overall than people who don't even drink or do drink. It's lower than everybody, right, right, So like, if you're just ignore me, a normal who doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, you're like a ned Flanders type.

Statistically speaking, in the first nine years of marriage, you're more likely to commit violence against your partner than a person who smokes pot regularly. It's hilarious. It is funny, like you gotta look look at it a certain light and just kind of divorce yourself from the partner violence things.

I mean nothing about that. It's funny. I just picture like the the stone person on the couch being like, well, no, of course, I'm not gonna get mad and hit you, right, why I ought to I forgot what I ought to do. So on the other end of the spectrum, alcohol is

linked to a surprising an alarming amount of crime. The Partner of Justice says that alcohol is a factor in fort of the violent crime in the United States, and there was a survey of two million convicted offenders who were currently in jail at the time of the survey. Thirty seven percent said they were drinking at the time they committed their crime. So that for partner violence too, that's a bet it's way higher. Even it is that

was the highest. One was men drinking, but also women drinking too, and they had a higher Those are believe are the two highest incidences of intimate partner violence in the first nine years of marriage. If the show Cops can anecdotally tell a tale is that of the home visits where the husband and wife are both bombed and pushing each other around. Is uh, that's kind of like every every episode of Cops. Basically, it's definitely got that one. I still watch that show me now, and then Emily

gets so upset at me. It's on all the time still, it's like Golden Girls. Sometimes sometimes I'll catch a little bit of one and just remember, like, oh, I used to watch this in college and think it was a hoot, and then part of me is like so depressing. It's so depressing watching it that I can't even you know, watch for five minutes. Man, I was. I tweeted the other day that I used to think, um, humanity was on the whole like generally decent and good, and then

I started watching a lot of forensic Files. Yeah I should watch that. I don't think you should. Man, it really will kind of change the way you look at people that people do some really bad stuff. Yeah, it's really really depressing. He's kind of losing a measure of faith in humanity because the way that the show presents it too is still like a matter of fact, this happened, and you know, this person picked up a rock and beat there their friend over the head and then took

their five dollars. You know, stuff like that. Do you want to take a break, We said, okay, let's take a break and we'll we'll talk about driving while intoxicated right after this. All right, we're back. Um, here's the deal with driving drunken stoned? Um four. Sure you shouldn't be doing either. We're not endorsing either one. But the statistics and studies roundly say that when you were drinking, you are way more likely to be like, I can take this curve, it's eighty Uh, I'm fine to drive.

And people that are stone that are like, I need to be super careful because I'm a little high right now, and I'm going to be extra careful and drive even slower than I should. Yeah, Like that is what the studies show. Yeah, the in the differences are so pronounced that you can look at fatal accident statistics and see that in some in some areas, the legalization of pot has actually brought the number of traffic deaths down in

those states. And they think that the reason why is because people are drinking less and smoking pot more, and that when you smoke pot, you are something of a You're not a safer driver necessarily, although some studies show that you actually are safer than than people who aren't impaired. That's that's pretty rare. But you're a safer impaired driver, for sure. But I think you've said something very very true.

You shouldn't be driving stoned or drunk. It's just because you're you're taking your own life in your hands, you're also taking the lives of everybody else out on the road on your hands, and shame on you for that. Yeah, but I found it very interesting that some of these studies like roundly say that a person um stoned is way more likely to say, hey, you know what, I'm stoned, uh and I need to be super careful, and a person drinking will say, I'm fine, give me the keys,

I'm fine. Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. So like that's there's two different ways that being impaired and driving affect you, whether you're stoned and whether you're um drunk. And what tends to happen is if you're drunk and you're you're driving, you typically act more impulsive, lee more aggressively, more recklessly, which are three things that really go poorly with driving. So you're going to tailgate more, you're gonna

pass people more, you're going to speed more. Um, you're going to just be an aggressive driver, but also one whose reaction times are not as good as they are normally right when you're stoned. However, the general idea among scientists who are just beginning to study the stuff over the last few years is that you tend to overestimate how impaired you are. Where you smoke some pot, you

feel stoned. Now you've gotten behind the wheeled car, and you're a little freaked out, to be frank, You're worried that you're going to get pulled over, that you're going to cause a wreck, and so you're actually overcompensating for your impairment because you're overestimating the amount of impairment you have, and so you're going to drive slower, like much slower sometimes. The one dude in the article said that the joke

is each and Chong driving twenty on the expressway. Yeah, there's the study that just is hilarious to me that that in driving simulators, these these people who were conducting the study had to remind the stone drivers to keep up to the speed limit, like they kept dropping below the speed limit. They also tend to give more distance between the next car and their car, even when compared

to nonimpaired drivers. Yeah, and the one thing, uh that I found remarkable was that when they did the UM simulated experiments, people under the influence of marijuana performed worse than they did in the real driving experiment. So, in other words, in the room with a simulator, they might have goofed up some, but when they actually got behind the wheel, they again turned on some switch that was like,

all right, gotta be super careful, right, So interesting. Yeah, and and even more to the point, you they if you take the individual things that driving were wires like coordination, paying attention, reaction time. If you test those things individually outside of the context of driving, people who smoke pot routinely do worse UM on those things. But again, yeah, when they get behind the wheel, it's like it's serious

time for for people who smoke pot. That So the thing about that, though, is that the studies find that that's true up to a certain point, that when you pass a certain level of impairment, then all of a sudden, your chances of being responsible for a fatal accident go up dramatically. And what they found is that that that point correlates possibly to um a a th HC content in your blood of about five parts per billion or five nano Graham's per leader, Yes, which is very it's

a very controversial number. It's a controversial amount well, and it's um at this point, like a breathalyzer. We did a show on breathalyzers. It was Boy, that was a tough one. Yeah, I remember how complicated those things are. Yeah, that was very technical and tough. But there's like a magical crystal involved in them. But with a breathalyzer, like you can tell when someone is literally drunk at that moment. Um With with marijuana, you're doing blood and urine tests

that shows that you have marijuana in your system. If you are a heavy marijuana user, you could be stone cold sober and show marijuana in your system. So they don't really have a full proof way of testing like pulling someone off the street but from behind the wheel of a car and seeing if they were stoned at

that moment. So the and that's one of the reasons why some states are starting to adopt that five parts per billion threshold because apparently studies find that if you're a regular smoker and you've got a bunch of THHC in your body that's accumulated, but you haven't smoked, we lee you're not gonna be over five parts per billion, okay.

And then the other one is that that that statistic that says that your chances of being in a fatal crash increased dramatically at five over five parts per billion. So that's why some states are adopting it, but some other studies, especially once out of Europe, are like, WHOA, that is way too high a limit. It should be more like one part per billion um. I think they're trying to land on the right number. They definitely are.

I think Sweden is adopting a one part per billion um limit, and they're apparently famous for being really strict about impaired driving, so they kind of set the trend on the one end of the spectrum, whereas the US kind of edges towards the other end of the spectrum.

Like with blood alcohol content, I think the legal limit in most states is point oh eight percent, which is about I think for like a hundred and eighty pound man, that like three or four drinks in an hour, and I mean three or four drinks in an hour and getting behind a car that is a lot that you're not driving very well. It's like an arbitrarily high number

if you really think about it. Part of the other problem too with testing for whether somebody is impaired UM by pot or reach some sort of some limit or threshold, is that there's no UM there's no real reliable way for testing it on the side of the road, including that roadside UM field sobriety test. They make you stand on one foot and make you um walk, heal the toe and then turn around. And I think there's a third part to it too, and that's actually really good

at catching drunk people. It catches like percent of people who are drunk at the time, but it only catches like thirty percent of people who are stoned. So the cops are starting to come up against this, these new laws where you're allowed to smoke pot, but how much is too much to get behind the wheel of a car, And there's a real guidance and they don't really have any way of testing. And again, like you said, in ten years, all of this will be resolved. But UM

for the time being. It's kind of like the Wild West as far as driving while impaired by pot legislation is concerned. Yeah. I got pulled over coming home from college to Atlanta one time. Uh, only time I've ever had like a field sobriety test done on me, and he flat out asked me, He's like, Mr Bryant, have you been smoking marijuana? After he put me through it, because he did the thing where you follow the finger

with your eyeballs. Yeah, that's the third part. And I think it's supposed I'm not sure what's supposed to happen, like your eyeball twitches or something once it reaches the edge. I think it bounces up and down while it's going left or right. Okay, well I'm not sure. All I know is he told me, you know, keep your head forward and follow with your eyes. And I turned my head and followed his finger, and I was just I

was nothing. I was sober as a judge, and I was just nervous because I've never been pulled over on the side of the road and told to walk a line. And he finally just asked me, I was like, no, like nineteen, I was just scared yea, And eventually he was like, all right, getting your VW beetle and drive home. Did you did you take the tack of um crying to get out of the ticket? No, I cried on the inside, okay, which you know I don't think you noticed.

This is interesting that I've never you know, that's the only time in my life I've ever been pulled over and given that test. And it was even if you're sober, it's a little nerve wracking, sure, yeah it was. It's it's like that white coat syndrome where your blood pressure goes up at the doctor's office because you're anxious for being at the doctor's office. I know, I remember going like in my brain, he alto he al too right. I was like, wait a minute, this this is no problem.

My balance is never a good officer when of that ever works or asofer, it's always fun to throw that in, but be totally sober. Just go ahead and sit in the back of that police car after one. Has you got anything else? No, I mean we should point out that, you know, another a factor with drinking and driving is you know, you drink at a bar a lot of times, whereas they think predominantly if you're smoking pot, you're probably

in your home, so you're not driving. Um. There are all sorts of other factors that that go into these big, big statistical studies. But we're we're just at the the eve weird mere babies as a country when it comes to marijuana legislation and study. Yeah, be interested to see where it goes. I'll see in ten years. Yeah, I'll see intent man. Okay, Well, in the meantime, Uh, you can look up well, there's not this article on house to works. You can just look at pop versus alcohol

and it'll bring up a lot of great stuff. We worked off of some stuff from Popular Science, from Slate, from actually there's a house stuff works article now I think about it, Live Science, High Times. Some good resources out there. Just hit them up Willie Nelson dot com. Yeah. Uh. And in the meantime, since Chuck said Willie Nelson, it's time for listener mail. Um, this is overlap of podcasts. I don't think i've read this one yet. Hey guys,

my name is Neil. I enjoy listening to stuff you should know and stuff you missed in history class, and roller skating and long walks on the beach. Sometimes I've heard the same subject get Daylight on both of your programs, though very recently, you guys did a Mary Celeste episode, and if I recall, Holly and Tracey did the same story not too long ago. UM Josh mentioned a chuck about the woman who painted miniature crime scenes, and so

did they. My question is whether or not we ever swapped notes on subjects a cross reference eats cross reference each other's work. UM, where there might be overlap, it could be nice even set up different situations where each podcast looks at the same subject to a different angle. Anyway, it might be a good thing to introduce to the other podcasts to someone who's not listening to it. Keep

up the good work. That from Neil in Washington, d C. Neil, I think we've answered this years ago, but we well, I was about to say, we try not to overlap, but no one really pays much attention internally in it. It just happens sometimes. And the only time it's ever been like shoot is when it's literally within like a few weeks of each other. Then we might have wished we would have timed it differently, But we always feel like all the different shows bring different things to the table,

and so it's really not a big deal. But we definitely don't check with each other or share notes or anything. We're all on our own little bubbles. Yeah. But also, I mean, if we are aware that one of the other podcasts has already done something like that doesn't preclude us from doing it ourselves, and we would probably mention it if we were aware of it, like go check out their version of it two, because it's always so different enough that it's usually worth listening to both, you know,

I agreed. Okay, Well, if you want to get in touch of this, you can tweet to us. There's an official Stuff you Should Know one called s Y s K podcast. I've got my own called josh um Clark. I also have a website called are You Serious Clark dot com. Uh Chuck is on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant. It's Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can also hit him up on Facebook dot com

slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send all of us, including Jerry and email to Stuff Podcasts at how Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works? Dot com