Driving Stoned

There’s an old saying that if something looks like a pig and smells like a pig and acts like a pig, that it is probably a pig! Well, when an officer comes upon a grisly car accident and there is drug paraphernalia in the vehicle, then it does seem very likely that the driver may not have possessed all of her sensibilities when she flipped her car over.

It happened in Oakland on New Year’s Day just before 1 p.m. Ailish Andersen, age 18, from Council Bluffs, was traveling west on Highway 6 in her Hyundai Sonata. She passed a vehicle and then lost control of her Sonata and went down into a ditch. The Sonata rolled over and ended up back on its wheels, enmeshed in a barbed-wire fence. Someone called the police and the Oakland Rescue transported Ailish to Alegent Health Mercy Hospital. She was injured, but not critical.

The sheriff’s deputies cited her for possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia, both of which were found inside her Sonata. They also gave her a ticket for not wearing her seatbelt and for not maintaining control of her vehicle. They will not be able to charge her with being under the influence of drugs, however, until the results of the drug test are in.

Ailish should be glad that she survived this accident, and one would hope that this is a lesson she will learn from at her young driving age. She should also be glad that she did not cause harm to anyone else on the road.

Since she may have been under the influence of marijuana, let’s talk for a minute about what that does. Just like alcohol, it affects the area that is able to reason, first of all. This is why so many people decide to go ahead and drive, because the substance that they have used has rendered them unable to make an intelligent decision about the matter. This is why a woman in another state got into a minivan with her 4 children and a niece while under the influence of marijuana. She got into a terrible auto accident which was her fault, and 4 out of 5 of the children died.

Ailish, if she was using marijuana, should learn from this.