LA City Attorney Has Marijuana-Smoking Reporters Drive an Obstacle Course
With the looming possibility of the passage of Proposition 19—which would decriminalize the recreational use of marijuana in California—Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich wanted to conduct some of his own research into driving under the influence of marijuana.
So he tapped two reporters whom he knew to have medical marijuana cards—Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez and KABC radio host Peter Tilden—to take a few hits and drive on an obstacle course at the Los Angeles Police Department training center in Granada Hills, Lopez recounted in a Los Angeles Times column.
“Trutanich and many cops believe that if Proposition 19 passes next month and marijuana is as legal as potato chips and nearly as cheap, more new users will be driving under the influence, so the experiment would be worthwhile,” Lopez wrote in a later column.
Lopez first drove the course unimpaired, and then drove it again after smoking enough marijuana to have him”giggling like a high school sophomore.”
Lopez noted that he couldn’t resist the urge to play a prank of the officers, revving the engine and jerking the car in their direction while honking the horn. The officers jumped, ready to scatter.
“I thought everything was hilarious, but in retrospect, it probably wasn’t,” Lopez said during a Wednesday interview on NPR’s All Things Considered.
One obstacle forced Lopez to quickly change lanes, but Lopez said he found it difficult to have to process a lot of information and make a quick driving decision while under the influence. “I swerved radically before getting into the correct lane, and if I were a cop, I’d have pulled me over,” Lopez wrote.
All in all, though, he said he felt less impaired than he would have been after a few beers or glasses of wine or “if I was one of the morons who drive while texting and yakking on cellphones.”
