Driving, Cannabis & Unicorns

How many destitute cannabis addicts have you seen littering the streetscape recently? How many hard smoking cannabis users have you come across that frequently go home after a night smoking cones to beat their wife in a fit of rage? How many ambulances were dispatched last Friday night on a ‘cannabis incident’?

None of these propositions fit with the real world and our common lived experience. Yet we nevertheless continue to argue about the regulations that should pertain to cannabis use in an entirely fictitious world that seems to exist only in the mind of the regulators.

At least 1,300 people were killed on Australian roads during the 2025 calendar year. Historically, for every death, approximately 30 to 40 people are seriously injured, equating to roughly 40,000 to 50,000 serious injuries annually. Anyone who has a computer can verify these numbers just by typing some queries into any reputable AI chatbot. But if you ask the same chatbot ‘how many people were killed and/or injured by cannabis in Australia in 2025’ then the numbers provided are very strange.

In 2025 there are no fatalities attributed to cannabis in the data produced by the ABS. Yet at the same time, oddly, the ‘Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’ (and one or two other startlingly carefully named ‘institutions’) want to say different. According to these ‘research’ bodies, there are at least 35 deaths attributable directly to cannabis each year. Moreover, there are also (supposedly) about 6,700 hospitalizations. However, to anyone who is at all familiar with the scene in any busy medical centre, anywhere in Australia, on any busy night, these figures seem to be a bit high. Cannabis use is frequent, yes, but rarely is it a causative factor in any injury or accident.

Yet even if we accept these somewhat dubious figures, from a group of people who seem to be awful anxious to demonise the weed, let’s ponder the relative harm that this might represent to the Aussie public. Each year in our country our public hospitals handle millions of interactions. In 2024-5 there were about 7.4 million admitted patient hospitalisations and 9.1 million emergency department (ED) presentations. So even if we believe these very very woolly figures – presented by those who want to paint cannabis as being the devil’s tobacco – then it indicates that 0.0905405405% of the hospitalisations in Australia last year were due (in part or wholly) to cannabis use. Damn that demon weed! It’s causing havoc.

Anyone with access to a google machine can do the same arithmetic. It is fun and incredibly thought provoking. It makes one wonder why it might be that we are expending such an exorbitant amount of time money and public focus on a problem that simply does not exist. No Jane, there are no unicorns dancing in the street. Nor are there massive problems associated with policing the potential for impairment by cannabis while driving. Or anytime really. Stoners are not a problem: full stop. Weed is relatively harmless.

This is not to deny that some people get stoned and do stupid things. Sometimes, but rarely, this leads to injury or death. But relatively it is simply not a health and welfare problem of any consequence. Cannabis use in our society does not need to be criminally or even strictly regulated simply because the relative harms that are being inflicted upon our society by the use of cannabis are inconsequential when compared with virtually any other intoxicant or medicant. Even if there are 35 deaths where cannabis is a contributing factor – which this author seriously doubts – then this hardly warrants any large degree of regulatory intervention.

Consider that last year 50 people died in our hospitals from paracetamol abuse and another 225 were hospitalised with severe liver distress. Moreover, about 6% of all hospital admissions are due directly or largely to alcohol and multi-drug abuse.

Then, when at last you ask the google machine outright ‘how many people died from cannabis use last year in Australia’ it stutters quizzically, and quickly spits out the obvious truth that:

‘No recorded deaths are caused by a direct, fatal overdose of natural cannabis alone. Fatalities linked to the drug occur indirectly – primarily through motor vehicle accidents, accidental injuries, polysubstance toxicity (combining cannabis with other substances like opioids), or pre-existing cardiovascular vulnerabilities.’

Well duh!

So why are we eternally running around chasing unicorns? We hear the politicians and the medicos forever telling us that they are governing and regulating in a manner that is designed to protect us from harm. But why are cannabis users – of all stripes – forever being singled out for special mention. Paracetamol can kill fifty Aussies each and every year and it is still available over the counter. Cannabis kills nobody and is enjoyed by millions yet is nevertheless constantly the whipping boy for every regulatory body under the sun: all for problems that are largely imaginary.

Let me state loudly and clearly: cannabis intoxication while driving in our country is a relatively minor concern. IF an officer believes you to be both intoxicated and impaired then they should be allowed to do a roadside sobriety test. Then take a person into custody or let them go. There is often no correlation at all to the amount of cannabis in a person’s system and their driving ability. Many other factors are also consequential. These are all obvious and simple observations that seem to get lost in the herds of unicorns that are crowding the roadway. Cannabis intoxication while driving in our country is a tiny wee little problem, that we can solve, as soon as we finally banish the strange medieval ideas that beset many of our medicos and political overlords.

Sigh.