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Comment by extralego | Hacker News Reader

Yeah. And even then, that would have to be a result of both addiction and the state drug war. Without the latter, the stuff is extremely affordable. I was curious if it would help with anxiety so I ordered about $8 of it, which was about 2 sandwich bags stuffed full of it! It made me feel physically nauscious for the entire morning and I took a very small amount. But I don’t think I would have been impaired driving. Drivers on opioids frighten the crap out of me.

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> Drivers on opioids frighten the crap out of me

I don't mean this in an offensive way, but that's just because you're ignorant of the effects.

I suffer from chronic pain and use opioids every waking moment, but they do not impair my ability to drive safely.

Of course "being on opioids" isn't a binary thing; my medicinal dose is very different from a recreational one.

> Drivers on opioids frighten the crap out of me.

Is there any reason you personally feel that way or is it more of "opioids are strong and dangerous so I figure people driving on them is dangerous"?

We know that opioids impair ability to drive.

Actually, it looks like opioids are not associated with vehicle accidents

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14650448

I'm not too sure that the data in that 2002 study is relevant today. opiate use has skyrocketed since then and it's reasonable to believe that things have changed. In my career as a paramedic, i've probably encountered more vehicle accidents where someone admitted that they have taken opiates (oxy/norco/etc) than anything. Yet it's not going to go down as a cause in many cases because while a blood test would show positive for opiates, it's difficult to pin it down. Alcohol is much easier to pin on drivers.

Of course, but it's obviously going to depend on the dose and the person's level of tolerance.

A few years ago the UK revised their regulations regarding driving while using prescribed opioids, taking an approach that essentially allows the driver to decide if they are too impaired to drive.

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