cmdj1982 said:
With the government moving towards legalization of recreational weed this upcoming summer, will this affect how the CAF views recreational weed? Will it be treated the same way as alcohol currently is (basically don't show up to work intoxicated)(don't make an *** of yourself at the mess)? Or do you think it will continue to remain a banned substance for CAF members?
I'm not sure you fully appreciate the CF's approach to alcohol. In addition to the colloquial "eight hours bottle to throttle", you can also be charged with drunkenness if you're too hung over to do your job. I would suggest the same perspective would remain for MJ.
Moving on. Ethanol has a known elimination curve of 5mmol per hour average, so eight hours would have you start at 40mmol; or about twice the legal limit (0.08mg/ml = 17.4mmol). The reality of course is that many folks don't actually stop drinking eight hours before needing to work, so it's easy to still be drunk in the morning, but somewhat functional.
We don't have the same fidelity of data for marijuana. We don't know what concentration of blood THC is required to induce impairment, although 50ng is being discussed as that threshold, but the dose to consumption ratio is hard to define. Some papers give an elimination half life for THC at 50 hours, some as much as seven days. In addition, it has been found that in the US 55% of marijuana impaired drivers also had elevated blood alcohol levels. Both chemicals have CNS depressant effects which would likely manifest in a synergistic fashion. You can see where this combination would likely increase the time that a person remained intoxicated. I would predict that for CF members, where alcohol is a common thing, co-ingestion would also be common, and not likely an either-or situation. In addition, there are long term, irreversible neurocognitive effects (memory, attention, learning, language, perception, and social cognition) from moderate to heavy marijuana use.
The challenge is that on one hand you have the MJ lobby and on the other the prohibition folks; both of whom are firm in their positions. In the middle you have the science, which neither side seems willing to embrace, but which on the whole seems to indicate that MJ is not the benign, all healing, wonder drug its proponents make it out to be, and that it may in fact be quite the opposite. There is still much work to be done, as access to good quality clinical samples has always been an issue. Perhaps new data will emerge from those jurisdictions where access to MJ will not be a nearly insurmountable hurdle for researchers.
So, at the risk of guessing... which I am, I would predict that MJ will continue to be verboten for military folks, the legal status of the drug notwithstanding.
