Jacob Sullum on Pot Prohibitionists Who Undermine Their Own Warnings About Legalization and Car Crashes

If marijuana is legalized, John
Mica warned at a recent congressional hearing, there will be blood.
“In the last dozen years,” the Florida Republican said, “we’ve had
[half] a million Americans slaughtered on the highways…and half of
those fatalities are related to people who are impaired through
alcohol or drugs.” Legal pot will compound this “phenomenal
devastation,” he said, since “we are going to have a lot more
people stoned on the highway.”

Mica, a proud pot prohibitionist who chairs a subcommittee of
the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, convened the
hearing to raise an alarm about the deadly threat that legalization
poses to anyone navigating the roads and highways. But by the end
of the hearing, says Jacob Sullum, anyone who was paying attention
recognized that Mica’s grim prophecies have little basis in
fact.

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