Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan’s Driving Research and Simulation Laboratory will begin looking at how cannabis edibles impact people’s ability to drive in 2025.
“There’s a lot of research on smoked cannabis and the impacts on driving, but very little on the effects of edibles,” Alexander Crizzle, the lab’s director and an associate professor of public health, tells the CBC.
Participants in the study will get to eat a 10 mg THC edible and will be provided with snacks and cab fare home.
The research team will then measure participants’ impairment utilizing their in-house driving simulator, Crizzle tells the CBC in Saskatchewan.
“We also have a battery of tests where we can look at how people think and we kind of stress them out a little bit to see how well they perform under a certain amount of stress. That kind of gives us a good indication of how much the edibles are impacting their ability to think and drive.”
The Driving Research and Simulation Laboratory (DRSL) at the University of Saskatchewan is directed by Crizzle and contains state-of-the-art driving simulators to study the impact of technology, rehabilitation, road design (e.g., intersections, roundabouts, bicycle lanes), and training. Among other features, the DRSL also has a full array of clinical assessments such as vision, cognition, and motor tests.
The lab is also a co-investigator in the multi-year “Don’t Drive High” campaign from 2021-2024, with funding from the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR). This Canada-wide project partnered with young Canadians to better understand the factors that influence their decision to drive high.
A recent 2023 report from Public Safety Canada found that 23% of cannabis users nationwide admitted to driving within two hours of consumption.
In new figures from 2024, the number of people who reported using cannabis before driving (18%) increased slightly from the year prior (15% in 2023) but is still lower than the 27% who reported doing so in 2018.
This included 16% who reported driving within 2 hours of smoking or vaporizing cannabis and 10% who reported driving within 4 hours of ingesting cannabis.
Of those who reported using cannabis in the past 12 months, 78% said they believe that cannabis use impairs one’s ability to drive, while 13% responded that it depends, and 6% responded that it did not impair one’s ability to drive.
Image via usask.ca
