Several tribes will discuss this weekend whether they want to get into the cannabiz.

Michael Stusser’s column appears weekly on HigherGroundtv.com as well as the Seattle Weekly and other newspapers around the country.

It should be noted that I’m not exactly a shill for the marijuana industry. (Though product samples can be dropped off at the Weekly offices: make sure to mark packages “Legal Marijuana” lest they be confiscated by the federal post office.) That said, when there’s positive news related to cannabis, given my predilection for smoking the stuff, I have every intention of highlighting the study, report, innovation, or miracle cure—if only to counter the hundred years of Reefer Madness propaganda that came before. (They did have cool posters . . . ) With that pot-infused preamble in place, it’s time for a joke:

What’s the difference between a drunk driver and a stoned driver at a stop sign? The drunkard hauls right past, while the stoner waits for the sign to turn green.

A study released last week by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows no link between marijuana use and car accidents. And while that’s no green light to smoke a fatty and jump into the Caddy, it’s yet another death knell to the “Just Say No” talking points.

Data from the Roadside Survey of Alcohol and Drug Use by Drivers showed that booze increases a driver’s accident risk sevenfold. The road risk for people who test positive for marijuana, after adjusting for other factors, is the same as driving sober. Translation: Measurable amounts of THC in a person’s system doesn’t correlate to impairment as drinking and driving do. “At the current time,” states the NHTSA report, “specific drug concentration levels cannot be reliably equated with specific degree of driver impairment.”

In defense of the pharmaceutical industry (who are also welcome to send in samples), the use of painkillers, stimulants, and antidepressants also showed no statistically significant change in accident risk.

After alcohol, THC is the most common substance found in car crashes, and its presence increased the odds of smashing into something 25 percent. That risk, however, disappears after adjusting for variables like gender, age, and race. For example, men and young people are more insane drivers than women and the aged—and they’re also more likely to smoke ganja. Once you adjust for these factors, “the significant increased risk of crash involvement associated with THC . . . is not found.” Another complicating factor has to do with THC staying in the bloodstream for weeks on end, so while you may test positively after a fender-bender, you may also have been mellowing out (and unimpaired) for days.

Clearly, it’s best if people don’t drive under the influence of marijuana. Hell, some people shouldn’t be driving under the influence of their own power . . . because they suck. I’m only 50 years old and can barely see at night; they should revoke my license because of the odd raccoon-sized floaty-things that periodically drift across my retinas. Sorry, I digress. The most important thing for marijuana users to note is, while you’re not nearly as bad as the boozers on the road, it’s best to get baked and remain couchlocked. Who wants to fire up and sit in a steel cage, anyway? Stoned driving’s just not cool, man.

TRIBAL MARIJUANA RIGHTS RECOGNIZED

The Justice Department announced in December that it would allow Native American tribes to grow and sell marijuana on their sovereign lands, which sounds about right, since THEY WERE HERE FIRST.

Tribal governments are now trying to figure out whether they want to get into the ganja game, and have scheduled a national conference on the matter to be held here in Washington on February 27.

The Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, representing about 50 tribes, passed a resolution last year opposing legalization on their lands (partly due to health and safety concerns for their youth), while Washington’s Suquamish said they were exploring their options for production and sale. The Yakama tribe, with more than 10,000 members, also wants no part of legal weed, and outlawed it on both their own land (1.2 million acres) and the ancestral property (10 million acres) they ceded to the federal government.

So long as they do it in accordance with the federal guidelines set up for states that have legalized marijuana for recreational or medicinal use, any of the 568 recognized Native American tribes can grow or sell the plant. One key sidenote: When you leave the rez in a non-legal state, you damn well better leave the Kalamazoo Kush and Chinook Chronic behind, or you’re liable to be busted, big time.

The first Tribal Marijuana Conference will be held at the Tulalip Resort Casino. Tribes will pow-wow, so to speak, to discuss the future of cannabis on their territories, including cultural issues it may raise and concerns about substance abuse. Hopefully they won’t have to sit through Tulalip regulars like Engelbert Humperdinck, Billy Idol, or Tom Jones. These wonderful people have suffered enough.

Both use and approval are down.

Houston, we have a problem (with marijuana). No, it’s not that youngsters are getting stoned on the wacky weed and crashing cars or dropping out of school. It’s that they’re starting to dislike the stuff.

A report released last week in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse shows that not only has cannabis use decreased among teens, but disapproval of marijuana is up. (They could have said that approval was down, but the media is so opposed to putting a positive spin on drug use, even academic news is twisted.) Taking data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the survey is stunning for both its duration, from 2002 to 2013, and breadth, with 500,000 kids across the nation polled. Responses were aggregated from 105,903 younger adolescents (ages 12–14); 110,949 older adolescents (15–17); and 221,976 young adults (18–25).

“The proportion of adolescents aged 12–14 reporting ‘strong disapproval’ of marijuana use initiation increased significantly from 74.4–78.9%,” the report states. “Concurrently, a significant decrease in past 12-month marijuana use . . . was observed among younger adolescents.” Not only did the percentage of kids 12–14 who smoked pot go down (from 6 percent in 2002 to 4.5 percent in 2013), but the 15- to 17-year-olds who in my day were out behind the boiler room getting baked between classes also dropped significantly, from 26 percent in 2002 to 22 percent in 2013.

“With decriminalization, medicalization, and in some places recreational use, and adults no longer viewing marijuana use as an immoral act, we were concerned how it would affect teen use and attitudes,” noted one of the report’s authors, professor Christopher Salas-Wright from the University of Texas at Austin (figures). “But, especially at the middle-school age, youth became more disapproving, not more permissive. And certainly this data tells us we don’t see a dramatic spike at the national level in terms of marijuana use.”

The stats from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health looked at teen use and opinions all across the country. But what about specifically in the states where weed is legal? Surely there, kids love the ganja and use more of it! In fact, no. A study published last month in The Lancet Psychiatry (great centerfold, by the way) tells the same tale. Researchers looked at data from over a million teens in the 23 states that have had medical-marijuana laws on the books from 1991 to 2014, and once again the teenyboppers were nonplussed: “Our findings provide the strongest evidence to date that marijuana use by teenagers does not increase after a state legalizes medical marijuana,“ stated the study’s author, Deborah Hasin, a professor at Columbia University Medical Center.

Now clearly I have no interest in youngsters using marijuana. It’s not great for the developing brain and, like booze, should probably be delayed until at least 21. (Come to think of it, so should cell-phone use and driving!) But given my desire to see cannabis legalized federally, we’re eventually going to need these young people to vote for initiative measures when they arise in new states. Luckily, as teen rates have gone down, adult usage has increased: The number of grown-up cannabis users rose from 26 million in 2003 to 33 million in 2013—a whopping 37 percent. (High five?)

As for kids, decreasing interest in weed is probably one of those deals where what’s cool one day is uncool the next. Facebook was once the rage, and before you can say SnapChat, it’s for parents and Grandma. Same could be true with ganja: “We know American adults are starting to view this as a non-moral issue. We’ve seen the country’s adults changing, and we’re trying to get at what young people think and do,” said Salas-Wright. While states like Washington and Colorado have legalized weed, he noted, these laws “have not resulted in more use or greater approval of marijuana use among younger adolescents.”

The pendulum will swing back and forth, and hopefully smart measures will be put in place along the way to legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana for adult use across the land. It is kind of funny, though: Turns out it’s not Reefer Madness and anti-drug campaigns that are turning kids off to cannabis—it’s legalization.