February 1, 2018 • 51 mins
It's been the subject of teenage conversation for decades already, but now you can join Josh and Chuck as they dive into the science of how pot and booze affect your body, mind and behavior and learn which one comes out on top.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, we are going back on the road and
we are super excited because we're gonna be doing brand
new material, which we are certainly glad for. And if
you live in oh Denver, or Cleveland or St. Louis
or Boston or Washington, d C. Then you can come
see us. Yes, you can come see us. Specifically, if
you're in Boston, We're gonna be at the Wilbur Theater
(00:21):
on April four, and then the next night on April five,
we're gonna be in d C at the beloved Lincoln Theater.
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
(00:44):
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
(01:04):
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.
(01:28):
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
(01:49):
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?
(02:13):
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
(02:34):
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
(02:54):
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,
(03:15):
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
(03:38):
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,
(04:01):
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
(04:21):
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,
(04:43):
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
(05:04):
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
(05:25):
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
(05:49):
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.
(06:09):
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
(06:33):
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.
(06:54):
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
(07:17):
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
(07:39):
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
(08:01):
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
(08:22):
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
(08:44):
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
(09:08):
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
(09:31):
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
(09:54):
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,
(10:20):
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
(10:43):
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
(11:04):
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
(11:26):
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.
(11:49):
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
(12:11):
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
(12:31):
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
(12:52):
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
(13:12):
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
(13:36):
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
(13:57):
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
(14:21):
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
(14:46):
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
(15:08):
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
(15:28):
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
(15:48):
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
(16:11):
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
(16:35):
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
(16:57):
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
(17:20):
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
(17:41):
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,
(18:03):
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
(18:25):
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
(19:02):
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
(19:23):
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
(19:44):
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
(20:06):
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
(20:27):
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
(20:50):
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
(21:12):
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
(21:33):
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
(21:53):
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,
(22:16):
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
(22:36):
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,
(23:00):
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
(23:22):
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,
(23:45):
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
(24:07):
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
(24:28):
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
(24:49):
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,
(25:12):
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,
(25:35):
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
(26:00):
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
(26:20):
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
(26:44):
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
(27:06):
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
(27:31):
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
(27:54):
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.
(28:18):
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
(28:38):
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
(28:59):
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
(29:21):
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
(29:42):
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?
(30:04):
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
(30:25):
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
(30:47):
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
(31:08):
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
(31:29):
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,
(31:51):
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
(32:11):
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.
(32:35):
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
(32:55):
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
(33:17):
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
(33:39):
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
(34:01):
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
(34:24):
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,
(34:49):
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
(35:13):
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.
(35:34):
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
(35:54):
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,
(36:17):
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
(36:40):
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
(37:00):
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
(37:21):
a break and we'll we'll talk about driving while intoxicated
right after this. All right, we're back. Um, here's the
(37:54):
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.
(38:17):
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
(38:37):
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
(39:00):
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
(39:22):
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,
(39:42):
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
(40:05):
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
(40:27):
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
(40:48):
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
(41:10):
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
(41:31):
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,
(41:52):
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,
(42:12):
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
(42:36):
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
(42:57):
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.
(43:18):
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
(43:40):
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.
(44:06):
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
(44:28):
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
(44:51):
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
(45:14):
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
(45:34):
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
(45:55):
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
(46:17):
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.
(46:40):
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,
(47:02):
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
(47:23):
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.
(47:43):
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,
(48:06):
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
(48:28):
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
(48:49):
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,
(49:10):
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
(49:33):
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
(49:54):
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
(50:17):
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
(50:40):
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.
(51:01):
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
(51:27):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff Works? Dot com
Hey, everybody, we are going back on the road and
we are super excited because we're gonna be doing brand
new material, which we are certainly glad for. And if
you live in oh Denver, or Cleveland or St. Louis
or Boston or Washington, d C. Then you can come
see us. Yes, you can come see us. Specifically, if
you're in Boston, We're gonna be at the Wilbur Theater
(00:21):
on April four, and then the next night on April five,
we're gonna be in d C at the beloved Lincoln Theater.
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
(00:44):
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
(01:04):
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.
(01:28):
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
(01:49):
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?
(02:13):
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
(02:34):
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
(02:54):
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,
(03:15):
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
(03:38):
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,
(04:01):
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
(04:21):
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,
(04:43):
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
(05:04):
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
(05:25):
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
(05:49):
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.
(06:09):
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
(06:33):
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.
(06:54):
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
(07:17):
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
(07:39):
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
(08:01):
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
(08:22):
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
(08:44):
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
(09:08):
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
(09:31):
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
(09:54):
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,
(10:20):
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
(10:43):
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
(11:04):
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
(11:26):
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.
(11:49):
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
(12:11):
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
(12:31):
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
(12:52):
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
(13:12):
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
(13:36):
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
(13:57):
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
(14:21):
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
(14:46):
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
(15:08):
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
(15:28):
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
(15:48):
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
(16:11):
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
(16:35):
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
(16:57):
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
(17:20):
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
(17:41):
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,
(18:03):
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
(18:25):
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
(19:02):
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
(19:23):
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
(19:44):
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
(20:06):
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
(20:27):
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
(20:50):
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
(21:12):
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
(21:33):
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
(21:53):
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,
(22:16):
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
(22:36):
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,
(23:00):
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
(23:22):
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,
(23:45):
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
(24:07):
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
(24:28):
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
(24:49):
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,
(25:12):
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,
(25:35):
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
(26:00):
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
(26:20):
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
(26:44):
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
(27:06):
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
(27:31):
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
(27:54):
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.
(28:18):
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
(28:38):
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
(28:59):
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
(29:21):
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
(29:42):
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?
(30:04):
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
(30:25):
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
(30:47):
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
(31:08):
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
(31:29):
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,
(31:51):
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
(32:11):
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.
(32:35):
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
(32:55):
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
(33:17):
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
(33:39):
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
(34:01):
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
(34:24):
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,
(34:49):
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
(35:13):
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.
(35:34):
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
(35:54):
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,
(36:17):
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
(36:40):
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
(37:00):
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
(37:21):
a break and we'll we'll talk about driving while intoxicated
right after this. All right, we're back. Um, here's the
(37:54):
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.
(38:17):
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
(38:37):
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
(39:00):
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
(39:22):
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,
(39:42):
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
(40:05):
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
(40:27):
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
(40:48):
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
(41:10):
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
(41:31):
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,
(41:52):
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,
(42:12):
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
(42:36):
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
(42:57):
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.
(43:18):
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
(43:40):
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.
(44:06):
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
(44:28):
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
(44:51):
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
(45:14):
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
(45:34):
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
(45:55):
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
(46:17):
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.
(46:40):
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,
(47:02):
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
(47:23):
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.
(47:43):
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,
(48:06):
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
(48:28):
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
(48:49):
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,
(49:10):
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
(49:33):
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
(49:54):
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
(50:17):
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
(50:40):
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.
(51:01):
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
(51:27):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
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