CDOT starts ‘The Cannabis Conversation’ campaign in Pueblo

Most of us have had this experience: You’re driving and the smell of marijuana fills your car because someone in a car near you is smoking marijuana and driving. But is it dangerous?

That’s what Erik Aragon, a man who lives in Pueblo, wants to know. He took part in ‘The Cannabis Conversation’ on Thursday at Colorado State University-Pueblo.

“So it’s just been really hard to really determine, you know, what is, like, dangerous high driving,” Aragon said.

That’s why the Colorado Department of Transportation recently launched a multi-year public safety campaign, ‘The Cannabis Conversation’, to talk about the dangers of driving high.

“Is it because they don’t think they’ll get pulled over by law enforcement? Is it because they don’t think it’s dangerous?” asked CDOT spokesman Sam Cole.

CDOT and marijuana industry leaders held a question-and-answer session during the forum and discovered that 80 percent of people in the room had driven while high.

“That, obviously, is not acceptable. We need to move beyond that and we need to do a better job at messaging these people and try and prevent them from driving high,” Cole said.

The problem is enforcement. All law enforcement have right now when they suspect a that a driver is high is the power of observation because there is no breathalyzer-type device to measure marijuana intoxication.

Panelist Jake Van Landschoot is the general manager for the Strawberry Fields marijuana dispensary. He said the dispensary does everything it can to inform customers like giving them handouts, but once they leave, it’s up to them.

“It’s really just getting that education to them. I mean really, that interaction between the customer and the budtender. We just really train the budtender to let them know what’s up there,” Van Landschoot said.

Everyone is striving for the common goal of safer roads and drivers in Colorado.

If you’d like to take the survey, visit their website here.