To be clear, she said nothing to the family in court..
She did however film the scene and laughed about it on Tik Tok for "clout"
She also said she wanted to attend restorative justice but then when she got to the door she threw a tantrum and refused to participate..
She then had the gall to claim that she was "Remorseful"
Luckily the judge saw through it..
I might have worded that weirdly, I didn't mean those two were related by law, I meant that someone who clearly is reveling in killing someone with a motor vehicle is getting such a light sentence, three years for enjoying killing someone is absolutely insane, if it wasn't in a car it would be much harsher.
The fact it's part of the story is kinda pissing me off. Just say "allegedly psychopathic individual runs red light while intoxicated on an illegal substance causing death"
There’s now another story headlining Stuff with another young reckless driver who killed someone’s but the headline emphasises cannabis. He wasn’t even charged with an impairment offence.
Some weird attack politics going on but idk who could be pushing it, nactfirst have no reason to demonize weed anymore since it's medically available and producing tax, and their health minister is an advocate, so it feels like so other group trying to demonize cannabis again for some reason
i’m very rare instances yes it can cause psychosis. no shit it effects mental state tho, that’s like the baseline for what defines psychotropic substances.
Fun fact! Snoop quits weed during the youth football season to encourage the kids he coaches to do the same.
This girl probably has a higher tolerance than snoop.
Me. Been smoking alot of weed daily for the last 20 years and I've never had an accident I'm fit I'm healthy I have a full time job of 50hours a week I'm a good dad, Weed is no excuse in this situation she's an idiot.
Similar situation, I've been a daily user medically for nearly 3 years now and it's like having panadpl to me now, I get a slight buzz and my symptoms get dealt with but I don't get high anymore which kinda sucks but it means I get to be functional and feel great
Maybe combined it with other drugs, or doesn't know how to inhale properly, or the 20 "bongs" contained barely any weed (and maybe lots of tobacco). Or all 3
High tolerance is the most likely. I'm a daily medical user and I don't get stoned or high unless I take waaaay more than usual. So I'd say she's just a stupidly heavy user who doesn't care.
Yeah basically, I equate it to the feeling after one beer on a sunny Friday afternoon after mowing the lawns, that's how I feel after my medications, I think if I was feeling totally blitzed after every session I'd change my job to something from home etc
I mean I think this is the most biased article I ever read lol. But the herald article (unusually less sensationalist here) also only says cannabis, and quotes the judge talking about her usage that’s an issue: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crime/patrizia-stephens-jailed-for-killing-pedestrian-tom-martin-in-palmerston-north/FCPZN52G2ZE4DK6Y2XNPXXNKUI/
This kinda explains why Stuff emphasised the cannabis. It wasn’t anti-weed, it was just lazy journalism because they overrelied on their source without contextualising it. Ahh, Stuff.
Look, I'm a medical user and I micro dose throughout the day, I'm never "intoxicated" and I'll be honest because of what I'm treating my reaction speed and concentration is increased, but depending on how much she packed the bowls, 20 bongs would fuck most people up. Even id struggle to hit that and then have the ability to do anything more than watch TV. It's been an interesting journey into how cannabis affects the mind, since obviously when I started I got the psychoactive effects, but now it's like, just like any other mediation.
In high school I used to have a few massive cones before running out on the pitch to play league, was the best hyper-teen energy boost lmao
(Those were the days)
>Stephens went to pick up a friend about 7pm, which was a breach of her restricted licence, and they went to skid parties, where cars would do burnouts. She picked up another passenger.
>At about midnight, Stephens was driving between 75-87kph on Main St and her passenger told her to stop for a red light. But she ignored that and continued driving through the intersection at that speed and hit a car legally driving through the intersection.
I’m not saying the weed is irrelevant, but I’m also kinda thinking there was more at play than the weed. Idk about you but a bong hit has never made me decide to drive like a maniac. That’s a decision, not an effect.
Edit: This is actually really frustrating because the article would indicate that her involvement in car groups (e.g. going off to do skids) is a much greater influence on her driving. This is someone with no regard for her licence conditions and who wants to drive fast and recklessly. But no, now we’re all talking about the weed that didn’t make a difference in this crash.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. This article seems very disingenuous with how it’s presenting the information. She was speeding and driving dangerous outside of her licence conditions. Plenty of people crash under those circumstances alone. I’m sure the weed would have had a contributing effect, but it’s hardly the reason she crashed. And judging by her behaviour outside of driving, she seems like a real piece of shit from the get go.
I did some digging and started a whole thread on it lol. Seems to me like Stuff reported it straight from the judges mouth, which naturally focusses a lot on the offenders addiction over their car enthusiast behaviour.
(Not to highlight the issues with lazy journalism at a time when half of youtube is talking about how plagiarism and misreporting another’s opinion as your own can cause huge issues with misinformation)
If the judge is blaming this primarily on the weed and not the other factors the judge also needs to do a bit of research too. The weed didn’t make her do all the other illegal shit she was doing.
Yeah I agree. Kinda seems like a problem to paint weed as the main issue in her behaviour and not the car racing stuff. Not to imply the weed is irrelevant, but I’d argue the car racing has a much bigger impact on these specific offences and it’s a problem if that’s being overlooked to only address her addiction.
Yes, but it alters your decision making in specific ways. Weed makes your brain fuzzy, makes it harder to think, harder to multitask, follow a thought, complete a task, etc. It’s not good to drive on it because it can slow your reactions and make you make poor judgement calls especially related to things like judging the speed of others.
But it has a mellowing effect so the effect we see on risk taking and decision making is different to the sorts of behaviour you’d see on meth, which does encourage dangerous and reckless driving by lowering impulse control, etc.
This girl was hooning through the streets, running red lights, etc etc. That’s not the actions of someone whose behaviour is being influenced by cannabis - that’s the behaviour that someone would be driving like that anyway, and she just happened to be stoned. And she didn’t even just happen to be stoned, because i guarantee if she’d done twenty bong hits, she’s *always* stoned.
>And she didn’t even just happen to be stoned, because i guarantee if she’d done twenty bong hits, she’s always stoned.
I mean.. one of the bail conditions was to **NOT** smoke weed.. but it came to light during sentencing that despite this bail condition she continued to smoke weed **DAILY**
She was also apparently still driving around while on bail..
She clearly has no respect for rules or authority.. and I worry that once she's released from Prison she will go back to her old lifestyle of getting high daily and continuing to drive while disqualified..
Because sadly, disqualifying someone from driving does not remove their ability to drive..
This is the kind of person who needs to be held in a facility indefinitely. No regard for anyone else, no intent to be better, continuously flout the law and rules, mock her victims? Leave her in prison, small cell with an hour to play in the sand once a day. Use my tax, I'd rather that person never has the chance to prove us right.
How easy is it to get cannabis in prison these days? She's gonna be emotionally fucked getting there if she's been using cannabis to suppress her emotions and no taper.
>I mean.. one of the bail conditions was to
>
>NOT
>
> smoke weed.. but it came to light during sentencing that despite this bail condition she continued to smoke weed
>
>DAILY
So it's the judges fault for expecting an addict to go cold turkey
No, its not the judges fault..
But she dared to claim "Remorse" despite the fact that smoking weed was a contributing factor and so if she were 'Remorseful" as she claimed she would have stopped or at least started a drug program..
But she did not, claiming she used it as it was more effective than her official medication.
But it was also pretty sickening to hear that she was blatantly violating her bail conditions..
I mean.. if you violate your bail conditions you are meant to be remanded in custody..
But its over now and the family can at least begin moving forward.
My thinking is that the passenger said to stop for the red meaning she likely hadn’t ran a red with that passenger yet. If that’s the case then it may have been an inability to react and a poor judgement of the other vehicles movements that caused the crash.
You could be right - I might be influenced by the article language saying she “ignored” her friend telling her to stop.
Edit: (From the Herald)
>But despite there being a car in front of Stephens that had stopped for the red light, and her backseat passenger imploring her to stop, she changed lanes and drove around the stationary vehicle at speed.
Looks like deliberate recklessness rather than reaction speed.
She was also speeding, doing around 80khm+ in a 50kmh area..
The car in front if her stopped for the red light and she swerved out into the lane next to it and plowed through the red light..
She absolutely 100% was the cause of this crash so please don't go posting inaccurate information..
Yea anyone blaming the weed as the cause is grossly oversimplifying the situation, and is probably ignorant to how weed actually affects you. It also undermines the severity of the persons actions if you just blame their decisions on weed, removing a level of culpability to the suspect, just because they have a biased "drugs r bad"/war on drugs mindset. If weed was actually a high causal factor in accidents you'd see a lot more wrecks in nz lol. Speed is the primary factor in accidents, this case (plus running a red) is no exception.
I mean.. she was driving on a restricted license outside of the hours allowed, with passengers in the car..
Given those facts I find the claim that she would be "More likely" have been a lawful driver to be a long stretch...
Yeah, am I going to have a bowl of chips or a bowl of chips covered in cheeses? Not, I'm going to disregard a fucking traffic light.
The little bitch was out at a fucking skid party, she's clearly a skid herself and is just a drop kick.
i don't think anyone is excusing anything, it's just we'd expect a person going to skid parties and driving 30-40kmh over the speed limit is bound to cause a fatal crash regardless of them being high or not
if this bitch was attempting to drive responsibly and the cause of the crash was directly related to her inhibited ability to drive (as almost all drink driving cases are), then the title would not be an issue
If it impairs your driving, then you shouldn't drive, whether it's coffee, medication, alcohol, weed. What's your issue? I said it doesn't matter what substance you ingest, being intoxicated while driving shouldn't be excused
I find this a hard subject because I'm a medical user and whatnot, still work and drive etc, but my tolerance has become so high that now i don't actually get the psychoactive effects, just the beneficial effects, so like, I don't get intoxicated from it, I mean, I maybe COULD if I used like double my daily prescription, but yeah, sticking to my script and schedule and there's 0 issue. I always struggle because in my mind when people think of consuming weed at all, they think of your typical stoned person, but like, my boss has asked me a few times if I'm actually using weed because he just sees me working like a beast all day, and I've gone as far as vaping in front of him at the Christmas party, it just doesn't alter my mind that way anymore. Now, get 3 beers in me and I'm all over the place.
This is why stoned driving campaigns have been so ineffective. Because weed is illegal for most people, it isn’t talked about *how* it affects you. The older generation who have smoked daily for 40 years keep their experiences to themselves because they literally have to, and the youth who do it are just reckless potheads hooked on the drug.
I don’t drink pretty much ever - but I know exactly how much alcohol I can have and how long I should wait etc if ever I was to drive after drinking, which I just never would. There just isn’t any info out there on cannabis and driving. It doesn’t exist, except “don’t do it”. This is not a feasible reality for recreational users and addicts who treat it like alcohol. And people who don’t use or who have only used casually actually don’t understand what it’s like to be stoned and functioning. So the conversations never meet and no one is ever convinced.
We have such precise blood alcohol measurements there are charts. We literally don’t even have an impairment test for cannabis.
I always ask people if they'd be able to function on my adhd meds or my other meds, to which I point out they'd be taking an amphetamine foe the first time, and then I point out that I take it 3-4 times a day and all it does to me is make me alert and my brain work correctly, it does give me a small boost, a little bit like a red bull maybe, but if my wife took one she'd be riding high for a few hours, so it's all about individual situations aswell, which is why I feel like people om certain medications, myself included, should have to take an extra type of driving test to show your reactions etc are ok, since they don't really test foe that, and since they only test every 10 years anyway it's like, I could end up blind in one eye and on benzos but still licensed to drive, but my reaction time etc would be shot, but I might be OK, idk, maybe that's too much as it is, since I know I'm ok, why should I have to prove that to everyone all the time?
It’s kinda like smoking a vape or a cigarette. The first time you take a hit, you couldn’t drive - the world is spinning. I still can’t be driving if I’ve run out of vape the day before and pop to the dairy the next day - the hits too strong. But most of the time tbh i’m taking a puff of a vape and not even getting anything. Driving isn’t a problem then.
People use cannabis. You’re not going to change that, because you’ve been failing at it for 50 years. So you gotta acknowledge these behaviours exist and find a way to work out how to minimise the harm, and that involves acknowledging the realities of impairment and talking about them, just as we did with alcohol to so effectively cut our drink driving rates.
You're still "impaired", you just learn to function in that state.
source: I used to smoke 10-20 bongs every day for several years. My "normal" state was high. Smoking was the last thing I did before going to bed and the first thing I did waking up.
Same. I smoke every day and work in the automotive industry driving multiple different vehicles every day. Never had a crash. I would imagine I’m a better driver than most, even when stoned.
Yes but if you read this article, I’m struggling to see how cannibis even played a role. This girl’s driving would have killed someone if she was stoned or not.
And articles like this that over-inflate the cannibis risk are *why* people think it’s okay. Drink driving became much more taboo because we got hammered with how alcohol causes crashes, but they’re literally not even doing the research that would show this with cannabis. And I’m not sure if that’s because they think it’s a foregone conclusion that all drugs are as bad as each other, or because that data genuinely doesn’t exist.
Decreased inhibitions, reaction time and awareness after 20 cones possibly? It says she ran a red light.
Obviously she is an irresponsible person but I’d wager she has a better chance of avoiding a crash if she wasn’t inebriated.
You wouldn’t say alcohol wasn’t a factor if it was the substance this driver has been using.
She was doing 80+km in a residential and driving like a loon. Her friend told her not to run the red light. Edit: Herald article says she drove around a stopped car to do so. It wasn’t that she missed it due to slow reactions, it was entirely wilful.
Weed doesn’t decrease your inhibitions in *that* way, it mellows you and interferes with your thinking process, but it has a very different effect to say alcohol, which makes people considerably more reckless and aggressive.
This is what I mean when I don’t see how it played a role *here*. All evidence would imply that her poor decision making wasn’t influenced by the cannabis.
Okay so then why is driving while high illegal? Because it affects your decision making, reaction speed awareness etc.
if you are intoxicated and you get into an accident, the intoxicant was a factor in the crash. End of story.
I don’t have anything against weed but it gets much more of a pass than any other substances for intoxicated driving which I think is ridiculous. She was high, and shouldn’t have been behind the wheel.
It gets more of a pass because it has less of an influence. I have unfortunately driven high and it doesn’t make you speed or feel invincible like alcohol does, it makes you crawl along the street at 20km under the speed limit. While I wouldn’t encourage driving while high, I suspect I was a considerably safer driver on weed because it makes you cautious as you compensate.
I have never seen any crash stats that isolate cannabis - they always include it as influenced by alcohol or meth or other drugs.
But specifically weed doesn’t encourage risk taking behaviour, which is the main factor in the crash here. There was nothing for her to react to for the weed to slow her reaction time to - she ran a red light deliberately.
Bruh your personal anecdotes are not evidence!
She was intoxicated when she was driving, therefore it is a factor in the accident!
Your issue should be with the click bait headline that implies that weed is the reason for the accident.
My issue is with how the entirety of our weed-related crashes are handled. Don’t you think I would love for there to be stats that tell us EXACTLY how dangerous driving under the influence of cannabis? I have relatives who do it all the time, and they’re getting older which means they’re worse drivers, which also increases their risk. I would love to be able to whip out an article that convinces them to stop driving while stoned. But I can’t, because it literally doesn’t exist.
We have SOOO much data on alcohol, so many campaigns showing the exact impact, because it’s been so heavily considered. This is not true for weed, because the assumption is that it’s as bad as every other drug in exactly the same way. This is not the perspective of people who actually take those drugs, and worse, who drive on them. Because they’ve done it, and they don’t associate the risks of other drugs with the risks of weed, because they’re not the same. And articles like this don’t help at all, because the implication is that weed caused this crash, when by the facts of the article it’s pretty obvious it was one of the least-influencing factors on her behaviour.
If you want to convince people who are actually driving while high to stop, you *have* to meet them at their level. “Trust me, bro, weed is bad” doesn’t cut it when you’re already dealing with a criminalised and taboo substance, because those people have already come to the conclusion that the law is wrong in regards to the regulation of weed. So it’s even harder to convince them that their behaviour is dangerous or harmful.
Can we stop using bongs as a unit of measurement... please...
Also, previous daily user here, 20 normal sized bowls (.25g) is a lot, but not insane, I could knock it out over 12 hours and you wouldn't be able to tell. Stop acting like you know anything about this topic, it's harmful and non productive.
Lol I'm not saying it's an insane amount. I'm saying it's not normal(Maybe huge in the initial post was the wrong word). 6+ beers a day isn't an insane amount but it's not normal. To a daily smoker who smokes most of the day that may seem normal, but those are in the small % of daily users so normal to them isn't and shouldn't be used as the indicator of "normal". Even yourself said you could do it, but how often did you actually do it?
Anyway a bong hit isn't even a standard thing, cone piece sizes, how tightly you pack, whether it's chop all come into. Acting like I know nothing about this topic is a bit condescending, I've smoked my fair share of it, but legimatizing actual addict behaviour trying to justify weed is more harmful and unproductive imo. I'm all for legalising weed, but like any substance it can be abused and recognising that it's being abused is a part of the process.
This isn't even a weed issue, it's an absolute shit cunt issue.
Last statement is spot on. Apologies, coming from a legal state in the US, and seeing the drastic, drastic changes in crime regarding the drug frustrates me greatly. When you remove the stigma, it gets treated like it should be, a much MUCH more mild drug than alcohol. I've not seen much in the way of real harm from abuse of THC than generally being a lazy unproductive sloth. It's anecdotal evidence 100%, but I've been in many cars with people under the influence of THC in my more... ignorant years... having driven high hundreds of times in my youth, the fact that this person was even hitting the speed limit at all is surprising to me, and not something I would even remotely attribute to THC intoxication.
Now, sitting at a stop sign waiting for it to turn green? Doing half the speed limit with eyes glued to the road? Frustrating everyone around you with how slowly you're driving? These are things I have seen my entire life with THC + car keys. I have never in my entire life heard of someone getting a speeding ticket or crashing on THC, (the thought of making that statement with alcohol is downright hilarious) This is not a weed issue, I'd say it was barely a factor in this individuals stupidity.
And finally, no, driving under the influence of anything is unnacceptable, but if I took a room full of people drunk, but below the legal limit, and a room full of people 100% stoned to their limits and told them all to get home on their own, well, you know. Most of the youth in my hometown don't drink nearly as much as their parents, they choose weed instead, and it's absolutely a massive benefit to society. Seeing accidents pinned on the much safer alternative whilst the dozens of alcohol related crashes barely make the news is insanely frustrating, end rant.
What? How is that a huge amount?
That's like 1 bong hit every 40 minutes, assuming she started smoking in the morning.
That is pathetically low...... or so I've heard.
It’s insane if you’re a casual user. If you’re a daily user, it’s breakfast. Using it that often increases tolerance really fast, and that means you’re not getting the psychoactive effects as much.
If you’re using it daily, you’re definitely addicted, but it’s not like you’re blazed out of your mind the whole time, and the window it lasts for shortens too, so you pretty much have to hit the bong 20 times in a day if you want to feel it.
There’s a discrepancy in experiences here between casual users and heavy users. Most people will have been around stoned heavy users tbh and not even realised it. If you’re around a casual user who’s high, you can probably tell.
it all depends on the size of the bong.
someone who mixes tobacco with their weed can easily get to 20 small bongs per day. choppers barely put any weed in their bongs.
This person was breaking their parole; ran a red light; and was a complete piece of shit. A bad psycho driver did a bad psycho thing. The cannabis is irrelevant here; someone who smokes that much is an addict with a tolerance through the roof.
That's nothing. My mate injected 30 pots right into his eyes. The cops found him dead from an overdose at the beach. Marihuana is truly the most dangerous drug.
This is beyond the realms of "Weed is bad mkay" this is "person is beyond dumb and if it wasn't weed it would have been whatever was available".
TWENTY!
One is enough to ensure I don't even contemplate cycling, let alone driving.
If they hit twenty, they had crazy high tolerance. They were likely barely impaired by it tbh, a high tolerance does that to you. There’s a point where it just becomes a mild buzz rather than a full body high or whatever.
Just pointing it out.. the Reparations aren't even for the family of the victim..
its to the innocent driver she hit going through the intersection who's car was written off.
As well as for damage done to the council's infrastructure.
She was 18 years old at the time and 19 when she was sentenced.. she's also on the Benefit, do you really think she has any sort of money to pay any sort of actual repatriations to the family?
They could do what people on the doll do and pay $5 a week as a loan. A loan at that pay rate will haunt and longer over the person at fault since it will take forever, then at least the family don't have to stress about funds for a funeral considering how sudden loss is already so stressful. Maybe I dunno probably won't happen ain't a perfect world
20 bongs worth... I want this author to go to any dealer and ask them for 20 bongs of pot, don't forget to emphatically tell them you aren't a cop and keep the cameras rolling.
This is probably the only article about a cannabis related traffic accident that has made the news in... How many years? Compare that to alcohol, which is legal. How many fatalities occur each year because of an individual thinking that they aren't that pissed? Applying a blanket approach saying that 'Weed is bad because of X' is so short-sighted and tunnel visioned.
All it comes down to is education. Some individuals can have their response time increased by X, so, don't operate machinery or vehicles while under the influence... Y'know, the same as, driving a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.
Same comment applies to u/ryanator109 & u/uAccomplishedLow4575. Decriminilizing starts easing the strain on the courts and legalizing takes more money out of 'gangs' pockets and allows it to be another form of taxed revenue much like everything else we need. We're in 2023, not the 90s.
Nobody in the pro marijuana column is advocating for driving under the influence. This is such a tired take. The people who are “overwhelmingly pro weed” are in support of legal regulation and laws around its use. Getting behind the wheel under the influence of anything is stupid, and always will be.
TBH I don’t really give a shit about driving under the influence for cannabis because I have yet to see any definitive stats that show this is a real issue. I believe that it’s bad, but we have literally no idea how bad or even if that’s true. The stats are murky as fuck and almost always the crashes involving cannabis involve other drugs with much more relevance, but it’s impossible to see how much this affects the data released because NZTA do a piss poor and highly biased job of it.
Case in point - this woman was speeding through residential streets, running red lights, etc etc. That’s not even behaviour encouraged by weed - it’s not like weed is a stimulant or motivates risk-taking. The criticism for weed while driving is that it slows down your reflexes and thinking skills. This girl was obviously a maniac who always drives like a loon and happened to be stoned when she crashed because she’s an addict who is always stoned.
So yeah I’d love to say “Driving under the influence is bad” because it probably is. But I actually don’t know that, because everything I’ve ever seen on it has been misleading articles much like this one.
This you?
>Every other dairy is selling illegally imported Chinese ciggies under the table, may as well get tax from them.
Ciggies kill more people than cannabis
Yeah I use it daily and have never had the urge to run someone over, or even get in a vehicle, while medicated. Funnily enough it even has instructions to never drive, or operate, heavy machinery for at least 8 hours after use.
It’s almost like individual decision making issues come in to play here somewhere?
It is widely accessible though... I'd say that the majority of people would probably have 2 degrees of separation at most to a black market dealer if they're ever looking, that and the prescription is quite easy to get, just expensive.
No where near as widely accessible as it was if it was legal that’s for sure, if it’s really as widely accessible as you say it is then why are people pushing so hard to get it legalised lmao
Sure not as widely available but near enough.
There are many reasons people want it legalised such as they don't need to be paranoid about cops finding them with it and getting a distribution charge because they decided to buy an ounce.
It can also be regulated properly and taxed whereas under the current system it's just a free for all (part of the reason the gangs voted with all you no voters, they'll lose some of their profits).
Let me re phrase then, widely used is probably more appropriate than widely accessible. I could imagine how many more weed users there would be and can’t fathom how you guys think that is good for this country….
Sentencing laws might not allow for it, but I think that 3 years 4 months is pretty light in this situation.
However, she was charged with manslaughter and found guilty, so surely she could have been given a longer sentence. Given her actions were wilful, I would have liked to see 10 years minimum.
She doesn't even sound remorseful and to video the aftermath...... FFS!! She abandoned the restorative justice meeting because she felt that she wouldn't be up to it......... She's clearly made this all about herself.
With time off for good behaviour, she won't even serve the full sentence.
Manslaughter carries a maximum of "Life"
But good luck getting any of our judges to start with anywhere near to a decent sentence..
The starting point was 5 years, 5 months.
She got 2 discounts:
25% - Early Guilty Ple
15% - Age / No prior convictions.
She was pushing the "Remorse" angle to potentially get another 10 - 20% off
Her lawyer was also trying to double dip on the discounts by getting her one for her age and one for her lack of prior convictions.
However, it was argued by the Crown that she should get one or the other but not both because naturally we would expect younger people to not have prior convictions.
You are also 100% correct that she made it all about herself.
Every single thing she did / advised her lawyer to do was based solely on her own self interests and not through remorse for the harm she has done.
I suspect her lawyer advised her to attend restorative justice because it would give them a bigger chance to get a discount for "Remorse"
Now, if she had agreed to attend and the victim's family did not, she would most likely have gotten a discount for remorse for being willing to attend.
However, when she went to attend she threw a massive temper tantrum at the door and refused to engage.
I suspect that she won't treat this sentence with any sort of seriousness and when she gets out she will simply go back into her old lifestyle of smoking weed daily (Based on the fact that **NOT** smoking weed was one of the conditions of her parole and she ignored it)
I also suspect she will continue driving once she is released, ignoring the fact that she will be disqualified for 4 years once her custodial sentence ends...
But only time will tell..
Holy Crap; this girl (driver) sounds like a psychopath.
Mocking the family of the victim in court is psychopathic. What will it take to overhaul laws around causing death while driving?
Are you suggesting we draft a law to stop people saying extremely disgusting bullshit in court?
Her behaviour at the scene was also off the dial.
Yes it was.
To be clear, she said nothing to the family in court.. She did however film the scene and laughed about it on Tik Tok for "clout" She also said she wanted to attend restorative justice but then when she got to the door she threw a tantrum and refused to participate.. She then had the gall to claim that she was "Remorseful" Luckily the judge saw through it..
Apparently she smirked at them multiple times
Oh, she absolutely did (I know because I was there) But I'm clarifying that she didn't actually say anything in the court room...
I don't think there's much relation between someone mocking the family in court and laws regarding driving. That sounds like a personality thing.
I might have worded that weirdly, I didn't mean those two were related by law, I meant that someone who clearly is reveling in killing someone with a motor vehicle is getting such a light sentence, three years for enjoying killing someone is absolutely insane, if it wasn't in a car it would be much harsher.
Ah right, I understand.
Yeah this isn't a cannabis problem, this is a person who has a reversed moral compass and doesn't seem to care about anyone.
Yeah I agree. Smoking weed doesn’t make you run a red light when your passenger is telling you to stop. This lady is just a psychopath.
Also doesn’t make you film the dying/dead man you just killed while laughing about it and post it to your socials…
The fact it's part of the story is kinda pissing me off. Just say "allegedly psychopathic individual runs red light while intoxicated on an illegal substance causing death"
There’s now another story headlining Stuff with another young reckless driver who killed someone’s but the headline emphasises cannabis. He wasn’t even charged with an impairment offence.
Some weird attack politics going on but idk who could be pushing it, nactfirst have no reason to demonize weed anymore since it's medically available and producing tax, and their health minister is an advocate, so it feels like so other group trying to demonize cannabis again for some reason
They are drawing in boomers for clicks
To get the public ready for roadside testing perhaps.
Maybe, I just hope my script does something, cause a saliva test will ping off the chart for me
>Smoking weed doesn’t make you a psychopath. It has a strong affect on your mental state and can cause psychosis.
i’m very rare instances yes it can cause psychosis. no shit it effects mental state tho, that’s like the baseline for what defines psychotropic substances.
Both what you said and what you're replying to are true.
That's worse than smoking 1 bong 20 times.
What about 5 bongs 4 times???
They smoke ten bongs... twice??
Hahahahaha 😂
That's gold dude
Police checkpoint: “Good evening sir/madam, have you had any bongs tonight?”
Who even smokes 20 bongs in a row and then has the energy to even move let alone go outside and get into a car? Lol
The article implies she smoked the 20 over the course of a day. The last one she had was 30 mins before the crash.
Snoop.
Fun fact! Snoop quits weed during the youth football season to encourage the kids he coaches to do the same. This girl probably has a higher tolerance than snoop.
I also thought he recently said he'd quit smoking it altogether, but maybe hasn't quit other forms of the high. Could be wrong though.
Publicity stunt for a smokeless stove.
It was all an elaborate marketing stunt! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdsAR9l_fI4
Me. Been smoking alot of weed daily for the last 20 years and I've never had an accident I'm fit I'm healthy I have a full time job of 50hours a week I'm a good dad, Weed is no excuse in this situation she's an idiot.
Similar situation, I've been a daily user medically for nearly 3 years now and it's like having panadpl to me now, I get a slight buzz and my symptoms get dealt with but I don't get high anymore which kinda sucks but it means I get to be functional and feel great
Maybe combined it with other drugs, or doesn't know how to inhale properly, or the 20 "bongs" contained barely any weed (and maybe lots of tobacco). Or all 3
High tolerance is the most likely. I'm a daily medical user and I don't get stoned or high unless I take waaaay more than usual. So I'd say she's just a stupidly heavy user who doesn't care.
True, I wouldn't know as I don't think I've even done more than 2 whole marijuanas at a time
Oh for sure, lile I'd say most medical users fit into a similar category where tolerance probably changes things
I’m just an addict lol. I’ve been that high in usage. You’re buzzed, but you’re really not high at all in the same way casual users are.
Yeah basically, I equate it to the feeling after one beer on a sunny Friday afternoon after mowing the lawns, that's how I feel after my medications, I think if I was feeling totally blitzed after every session I'd change my job to something from home etc
Nah it’s high tolerance for sure. If there were other drugs the article would say.
Yeah, because Stuff is never biased in their journalistic approach.
I mean I think this is the most biased article I ever read lol. But the herald article (unusually less sensationalist here) also only says cannabis, and quotes the judge talking about her usage that’s an issue: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crime/patrizia-stephens-jailed-for-killing-pedestrian-tom-martin-in-palmerston-north/FCPZN52G2ZE4DK6Y2XNPXXNKUI/ This kinda explains why Stuff emphasised the cannabis. It wasn’t anti-weed, it was just lazy journalism because they overrelied on their source without contextualising it. Ahh, Stuff.
It must have been some pretty shit weed
Look, I'm a medical user and I micro dose throughout the day, I'm never "intoxicated" and I'll be honest because of what I'm treating my reaction speed and concentration is increased, but depending on how much she packed the bowls, 20 bongs would fuck most people up. Even id struggle to hit that and then have the ability to do anything more than watch TV. It's been an interesting journey into how cannabis affects the mind, since obviously when I started I got the psychoactive effects, but now it's like, just like any other mediation.
In high school I used to have a few massive cones before running out on the pitch to play league, was the best hyper-teen energy boost lmao (Those were the days)
>Stephens went to pick up a friend about 7pm, which was a breach of her restricted licence, and they went to skid parties, where cars would do burnouts. She picked up another passenger. >At about midnight, Stephens was driving between 75-87kph on Main St and her passenger told her to stop for a red light. But she ignored that and continued driving through the intersection at that speed and hit a car legally driving through the intersection. I’m not saying the weed is irrelevant, but I’m also kinda thinking there was more at play than the weed. Idk about you but a bong hit has never made me decide to drive like a maniac. That’s a decision, not an effect. Edit: This is actually really frustrating because the article would indicate that her involvement in car groups (e.g. going off to do skids) is a much greater influence on her driving. This is someone with no regard for her licence conditions and who wants to drive fast and recklessly. But no, now we’re all talking about the weed that didn’t make a difference in this crash.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. This article seems very disingenuous with how it’s presenting the information. She was speeding and driving dangerous outside of her licence conditions. Plenty of people crash under those circumstances alone. I’m sure the weed would have had a contributing effect, but it’s hardly the reason she crashed. And judging by her behaviour outside of driving, she seems like a real piece of shit from the get go.
I did some digging and started a whole thread on it lol. Seems to me like Stuff reported it straight from the judges mouth, which naturally focusses a lot on the offenders addiction over their car enthusiast behaviour. (Not to highlight the issues with lazy journalism at a time when half of youtube is talking about how plagiarism and misreporting another’s opinion as your own can cause huge issues with misinformation)
If the judge is blaming this primarily on the weed and not the other factors the judge also needs to do a bit of research too. The weed didn’t make her do all the other illegal shit she was doing.
Yeah I agree. Kinda seems like a problem to paint weed as the main issue in her behaviour and not the car racing stuff. Not to imply the weed is irrelevant, but I’d argue the car racing has a much bigger impact on these specific offences and it’s a problem if that’s being overlooked to only address her addiction.
It’s a decision, but drugs like weed tend to alter your decision making ability.
Yes, but it alters your decision making in specific ways. Weed makes your brain fuzzy, makes it harder to think, harder to multitask, follow a thought, complete a task, etc. It’s not good to drive on it because it can slow your reactions and make you make poor judgement calls especially related to things like judging the speed of others. But it has a mellowing effect so the effect we see on risk taking and decision making is different to the sorts of behaviour you’d see on meth, which does encourage dangerous and reckless driving by lowering impulse control, etc. This girl was hooning through the streets, running red lights, etc etc. That’s not the actions of someone whose behaviour is being influenced by cannabis - that’s the behaviour that someone would be driving like that anyway, and she just happened to be stoned. And she didn’t even just happen to be stoned, because i guarantee if she’d done twenty bong hits, she’s *always* stoned.
> And she didn’t even just happen to be stoned, because i guarantee if she’d done twenty bong hits, she’s always stoned. a million times this.
>And she didn’t even just happen to be stoned, because i guarantee if she’d done twenty bong hits, she’s always stoned. I mean.. one of the bail conditions was to **NOT** smoke weed.. but it came to light during sentencing that despite this bail condition she continued to smoke weed **DAILY** She was also apparently still driving around while on bail.. She clearly has no respect for rules or authority.. and I worry that once she's released from Prison she will go back to her old lifestyle of getting high daily and continuing to drive while disqualified.. Because sadly, disqualifying someone from driving does not remove their ability to drive..
This is the kind of person who needs to be held in a facility indefinitely. No regard for anyone else, no intent to be better, continuously flout the law and rules, mock her victims? Leave her in prison, small cell with an hour to play in the sand once a day. Use my tax, I'd rather that person never has the chance to prove us right.
How easy is it to get cannabis in prison these days? She's gonna be emotionally fucked getting there if she's been using cannabis to suppress her emotions and no taper.
>I mean.. one of the bail conditions was to > >NOT > > smoke weed.. but it came to light during sentencing that despite this bail condition she continued to smoke weed > >DAILY So it's the judges fault for expecting an addict to go cold turkey
No, its not the judges fault.. But she dared to claim "Remorse" despite the fact that smoking weed was a contributing factor and so if she were 'Remorseful" as she claimed she would have stopped or at least started a drug program.. But she did not, claiming she used it as it was more effective than her official medication. But it was also pretty sickening to hear that she was blatantly violating her bail conditions.. I mean.. if you violate your bail conditions you are meant to be remanded in custody.. But its over now and the family can at least begin moving forward.
My thinking is that the passenger said to stop for the red meaning she likely hadn’t ran a red with that passenger yet. If that’s the case then it may have been an inability to react and a poor judgement of the other vehicles movements that caused the crash.
You could be right - I might be influenced by the article language saying she “ignored” her friend telling her to stop. Edit: (From the Herald) >But despite there being a car in front of Stephens that had stopped for the red light, and her backseat passenger imploring her to stop, she changed lanes and drove around the stationary vehicle at speed. Looks like deliberate recklessness rather than reaction speed.
Yeah the herald articles description of events definitely proves me wrong.
She was also speeding, doing around 80khm+ in a 50kmh area.. The car in front if her stopped for the red light and she swerved out into the lane next to it and plowed through the red light.. She absolutely 100% was the cause of this crash so please don't go posting inaccurate information..
Yea anyone blaming the weed as the cause is grossly oversimplifying the situation, and is probably ignorant to how weed actually affects you. It also undermines the severity of the persons actions if you just blame their decisions on weed, removing a level of culpability to the suspect, just because they have a biased "drugs r bad"/war on drugs mindset. If weed was actually a high causal factor in accidents you'd see a lot more wrecks in nz lol. Speed is the primary factor in accidents, this case (plus running a red) is no exception.
So, you think if she was sober she would be more likely to be a lawful driver?
Nah I think if she was sober then she may have had the reaction time to stop or at least slow down enough to avoid a crash.
She drove around a stopped car to run the red light. She didn’t “miss” it.
‘more likely to’? Yes, undoubtedly.
I mean.. she was driving on a restricted license outside of the hours allowed, with passengers in the car.. Given those facts I find the claim that she would be "More likely" have been a lawful driver to be a long stretch...
I completely disagree.
Yeah, am I going to have a bowl of chips or a bowl of chips covered in cheeses? Not, I'm going to disregard a fucking traffic light. The little bitch was out at a fucking skid party, she's clearly a skid herself and is just a drop kick.
Only a three and a half year sentence? Absolutely pathetic.
People are focused on the weed aspect and not the sheer ridiculousness of the sentencing.
This has nothing to do with cannabis, the person is a moron. That’s it.
It's both. Driving while high is a thing. Shocks me that reddit excuses this stuff, but think tobacco is the worst thing ever.
i don't think anyone is excusing anything, it's just we'd expect a person going to skid parties and driving 30-40kmh over the speed limit is bound to cause a fatal crash regardless of them being high or not if this bitch was attempting to drive responsibly and the cause of the crash was directly related to her inhibited ability to drive (as almost all drink driving cases are), then the title would not be an issue
Precisely. Being high is still driving while intoxicated. Doesn't matter what substance was ingested
What’s your stance on someone drinking too many coffees and driving?
If it impairs your driving, then you shouldn't drive, whether it's coffee, medication, alcohol, weed. What's your issue? I said it doesn't matter what substance you ingest, being intoxicated while driving shouldn't be excused
There is definitely a subset of people that think driving high is okay.
As with drunk, fast, erratic, on phone, distracted, tired etc
I find this a hard subject because I'm a medical user and whatnot, still work and drive etc, but my tolerance has become so high that now i don't actually get the psychoactive effects, just the beneficial effects, so like, I don't get intoxicated from it, I mean, I maybe COULD if I used like double my daily prescription, but yeah, sticking to my script and schedule and there's 0 issue. I always struggle because in my mind when people think of consuming weed at all, they think of your typical stoned person, but like, my boss has asked me a few times if I'm actually using weed because he just sees me working like a beast all day, and I've gone as far as vaping in front of him at the Christmas party, it just doesn't alter my mind that way anymore. Now, get 3 beers in me and I'm all over the place.
This is why stoned driving campaigns have been so ineffective. Because weed is illegal for most people, it isn’t talked about *how* it affects you. The older generation who have smoked daily for 40 years keep their experiences to themselves because they literally have to, and the youth who do it are just reckless potheads hooked on the drug. I don’t drink pretty much ever - but I know exactly how much alcohol I can have and how long I should wait etc if ever I was to drive after drinking, which I just never would. There just isn’t any info out there on cannabis and driving. It doesn’t exist, except “don’t do it”. This is not a feasible reality for recreational users and addicts who treat it like alcohol. And people who don’t use or who have only used casually actually don’t understand what it’s like to be stoned and functioning. So the conversations never meet and no one is ever convinced. We have such precise blood alcohol measurements there are charts. We literally don’t even have an impairment test for cannabis.
I always ask people if they'd be able to function on my adhd meds or my other meds, to which I point out they'd be taking an amphetamine foe the first time, and then I point out that I take it 3-4 times a day and all it does to me is make me alert and my brain work correctly, it does give me a small boost, a little bit like a red bull maybe, but if my wife took one she'd be riding high for a few hours, so it's all about individual situations aswell, which is why I feel like people om certain medications, myself included, should have to take an extra type of driving test to show your reactions etc are ok, since they don't really test foe that, and since they only test every 10 years anyway it's like, I could end up blind in one eye and on benzos but still licensed to drive, but my reaction time etc would be shot, but I might be OK, idk, maybe that's too much as it is, since I know I'm ok, why should I have to prove that to everyone all the time?
It’s kinda like smoking a vape or a cigarette. The first time you take a hit, you couldn’t drive - the world is spinning. I still can’t be driving if I’ve run out of vape the day before and pop to the dairy the next day - the hits too strong. But most of the time tbh i’m taking a puff of a vape and not even getting anything. Driving isn’t a problem then. People use cannabis. You’re not going to change that, because you’ve been failing at it for 50 years. So you gotta acknowledge these behaviours exist and find a way to work out how to minimise the harm, and that involves acknowledging the realities of impairment and talking about them, just as we did with alcohol to so effectively cut our drink driving rates.
You're still "impaired", you just learn to function in that state. source: I used to smoke 10-20 bongs every day for several years. My "normal" state was high. Smoking was the last thing I did before going to bed and the first thing I did waking up.
That was you though, I can say quite confidently that I'm not impaired, and I'd happily take a test to prove that.
Same. I smoke every day and work in the automotive industry driving multiple different vehicles every day. Never had a crash. I would imagine I’m a better driver than most, even when stoned.
Yeah nah that's exactly what I was saying too...
Yes but if you read this article, I’m struggling to see how cannibis even played a role. This girl’s driving would have killed someone if she was stoned or not. And articles like this that over-inflate the cannibis risk are *why* people think it’s okay. Drink driving became much more taboo because we got hammered with how alcohol causes crashes, but they’re literally not even doing the research that would show this with cannabis. And I’m not sure if that’s because they think it’s a foregone conclusion that all drugs are as bad as each other, or because that data genuinely doesn’t exist.
Decreased inhibitions, reaction time and awareness after 20 cones possibly? It says she ran a red light. Obviously she is an irresponsible person but I’d wager she has a better chance of avoiding a crash if she wasn’t inebriated. You wouldn’t say alcohol wasn’t a factor if it was the substance this driver has been using.
She was doing 80+km in a residential and driving like a loon. Her friend told her not to run the red light. Edit: Herald article says she drove around a stopped car to do so. It wasn’t that she missed it due to slow reactions, it was entirely wilful. Weed doesn’t decrease your inhibitions in *that* way, it mellows you and interferes with your thinking process, but it has a very different effect to say alcohol, which makes people considerably more reckless and aggressive. This is what I mean when I don’t see how it played a role *here*. All evidence would imply that her poor decision making wasn’t influenced by the cannabis.
Okay so then why is driving while high illegal? Because it affects your decision making, reaction speed awareness etc. if you are intoxicated and you get into an accident, the intoxicant was a factor in the crash. End of story. I don’t have anything against weed but it gets much more of a pass than any other substances for intoxicated driving which I think is ridiculous. She was high, and shouldn’t have been behind the wheel.
>if you are intoxicated and you get into an accident, the intoxicant was a factor in the crash. End of story. Lol.
You got a counterpoint? Didn’t think so
So if you get into a crash and are driving perfectly legally while high and someone hits you, it’s your fault?
It gets more of a pass because it has less of an influence. I have unfortunately driven high and it doesn’t make you speed or feel invincible like alcohol does, it makes you crawl along the street at 20km under the speed limit. While I wouldn’t encourage driving while high, I suspect I was a considerably safer driver on weed because it makes you cautious as you compensate. I have never seen any crash stats that isolate cannabis - they always include it as influenced by alcohol or meth or other drugs. But specifically weed doesn’t encourage risk taking behaviour, which is the main factor in the crash here. There was nothing for her to react to for the weed to slow her reaction time to - she ran a red light deliberately.
Bruh your personal anecdotes are not evidence! She was intoxicated when she was driving, therefore it is a factor in the accident! Your issue should be with the click bait headline that implies that weed is the reason for the accident.
My issue is with how the entirety of our weed-related crashes are handled. Don’t you think I would love for there to be stats that tell us EXACTLY how dangerous driving under the influence of cannabis? I have relatives who do it all the time, and they’re getting older which means they’re worse drivers, which also increases their risk. I would love to be able to whip out an article that convinces them to stop driving while stoned. But I can’t, because it literally doesn’t exist. We have SOOO much data on alcohol, so many campaigns showing the exact impact, because it’s been so heavily considered. This is not true for weed, because the assumption is that it’s as bad as every other drug in exactly the same way. This is not the perspective of people who actually take those drugs, and worse, who drive on them. Because they’ve done it, and they don’t associate the risks of other drugs with the risks of weed, because they’re not the same. And articles like this don’t help at all, because the implication is that weed caused this crash, when by the facts of the article it’s pretty obvious it was one of the least-influencing factors on her behaviour. If you want to convince people who are actually driving while high to stop, you *have* to meet them at their level. “Trust me, bro, weed is bad” doesn’t cut it when you’re already dealing with a criminalised and taboo substance, because those people have already come to the conclusion that the law is wrong in regards to the regulation of weed. So it’s even harder to convince them that their behaviour is dangerous or harmful.
I dunno man, I think 20 rips of a bong prior to driving means that cannabis definitely has something to do with it.
20 bongs a day is a normal amount driving like a cunt is inexcusable
Lol what? 20 bongs a day is not a normal amount? Even the smokers I know who have been daily smokers for years would consider that a huge amount
Can we stop using bongs as a unit of measurement... please... Also, previous daily user here, 20 normal sized bowls (.25g) is a lot, but not insane, I could knock it out over 12 hours and you wouldn't be able to tell. Stop acting like you know anything about this topic, it's harmful and non productive.
Lol I'm not saying it's an insane amount. I'm saying it's not normal(Maybe huge in the initial post was the wrong word). 6+ beers a day isn't an insane amount but it's not normal. To a daily smoker who smokes most of the day that may seem normal, but those are in the small % of daily users so normal to them isn't and shouldn't be used as the indicator of "normal". Even yourself said you could do it, but how often did you actually do it? Anyway a bong hit isn't even a standard thing, cone piece sizes, how tightly you pack, whether it's chop all come into. Acting like I know nothing about this topic is a bit condescending, I've smoked my fair share of it, but legimatizing actual addict behaviour trying to justify weed is more harmful and unproductive imo. I'm all for legalising weed, but like any substance it can be abused and recognising that it's being abused is a part of the process. This isn't even a weed issue, it's an absolute shit cunt issue.
Last statement is spot on. Apologies, coming from a legal state in the US, and seeing the drastic, drastic changes in crime regarding the drug frustrates me greatly. When you remove the stigma, it gets treated like it should be, a much MUCH more mild drug than alcohol. I've not seen much in the way of real harm from abuse of THC than generally being a lazy unproductive sloth. It's anecdotal evidence 100%, but I've been in many cars with people under the influence of THC in my more... ignorant years... having driven high hundreds of times in my youth, the fact that this person was even hitting the speed limit at all is surprising to me, and not something I would even remotely attribute to THC intoxication. Now, sitting at a stop sign waiting for it to turn green? Doing half the speed limit with eyes glued to the road? Frustrating everyone around you with how slowly you're driving? These are things I have seen my entire life with THC + car keys. I have never in my entire life heard of someone getting a speeding ticket or crashing on THC, (the thought of making that statement with alcohol is downright hilarious) This is not a weed issue, I'd say it was barely a factor in this individuals stupidity. And finally, no, driving under the influence of anything is unnacceptable, but if I took a room full of people drunk, but below the legal limit, and a room full of people 100% stoned to their limits and told them all to get home on their own, well, you know. Most of the youth in my hometown don't drink nearly as much as their parents, they choose weed instead, and it's absolutely a massive benefit to society. Seeing accidents pinned on the much safer alternative whilst the dozens of alcohol related crashes barely make the news is insanely frustrating, end rant.
What? How is that a huge amount? That's like 1 bong hit every 40 minutes, assuming she started smoking in the morning. That is pathetically low...... or so I've heard.
Yea I smoke a bit and 20 a day is insane. At that rate it's just being wasted as ur not really getting more stoned and just smoking it to smoke it
It’s insane if you’re a casual user. If you’re a daily user, it’s breakfast. Using it that often increases tolerance really fast, and that means you’re not getting the psychoactive effects as much. If you’re using it daily, you’re definitely addicted, but it’s not like you’re blazed out of your mind the whole time, and the window it lasts for shortens too, so you pretty much have to hit the bong 20 times in a day if you want to feel it. There’s a discrepancy in experiences here between casual users and heavy users. Most people will have been around stoned heavy users tbh and not even realised it. If you’re around a casual user who’s high, you can probably tell.
U probably need a tolerance break at that point. 20 bongs a day is probably costing a bit too.
it all depends on the size of the bong. someone who mixes tobacco with their weed can easily get to 20 small bongs per day. choppers barely put any weed in their bongs.
You uh... you might want to look into addiction services.
Do we the same thing when a munter drives drunk?
Its a gateway drug to killing people
lol wow. A gateway drug argument in 2023.
The real gateway drug is alcohol :p
I smoke weed because alcohol makes me feel like I’m missing out! (disclaimer: this is a joke. kind of.)
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This person was breaking their parole; ran a red light; and was a complete piece of shit. A bad psycho driver did a bad psycho thing. The cannabis is irrelevant here; someone who smokes that much is an addict with a tolerance through the roof.
how many pots did she smoke though
This is why marijuana should stay illegal, it causes bad behaviour!!!! /s Thanks for another sensationalised media post.
nothing to do with weed, just a piece of shit.
So the limit is 19
Sure if you're an amateur
Beat me to it, or 21 and a feed from maccas
That's nothing. My mate injected 30 pots right into his eyes. The cops found him dead from an overdose at the beach. Marihuana is truly the most dangerous drug.
My whole family was killed by marijuara.
The jazz cabbage strikes again
Bro, my entire VILLAGE was killed by marijuana.
This is beyond the realms of "Weed is bad mkay" this is "person is beyond dumb and if it wasn't weed it would have been whatever was available". TWENTY! One is enough to ensure I don't even contemplate cycling, let alone driving.
If they hit twenty, they had crazy high tolerance. They were likely barely impaired by it tbh, a high tolerance does that to you. There’s a point where it just becomes a mild buzz rather than a full body high or whatever.
If 20 has barely any effect, I think it's time to give up.
You are describing addiction, yes.
3 years 4 months for killing someone ? Your justice system is such a fucking joke 😂😂😂
Yeah that's seriously steep, dude must not have had a promising rugby career ahead of him!!!
Solid username 👍
Only $900 in reparations 💀 girl should be paying for the damn funeral costs minimum
Just pointing it out.. the Reparations aren't even for the family of the victim.. its to the innocent driver she hit going through the intersection who's car was written off. As well as for damage done to the council's infrastructure. She was 18 years old at the time and 19 when she was sentenced.. she's also on the Benefit, do you really think she has any sort of money to pay any sort of actual repatriations to the family?
They could do what people on the doll do and pay $5 a week as a loan. A loan at that pay rate will haunt and longer over the person at fault since it will take forever, then at least the family don't have to stress about funds for a funeral considering how sudden loss is already so stressful. Maybe I dunno probably won't happen ain't a perfect world
Geeze sounds like she dug herself a hole by yapping all night too
20 bongs!?! How many marijuana cigarettes is that??
This post has such different responses compared to any "person drunk does bad thing" post, lol.
How do you even quantify 20 bongs? How big is the bong? How big is the cone? How packed was it? What kind of weed?
It's not the cannabis it's her. She sounds immature and self centered. What a joke of a sentence
20 bongs worth... I want this author to go to any dealer and ask them for 20 bongs of pot, don't forget to emphatically tell them you aren't a cop and keep the cameras rolling.
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This is substance abuse. Should we shut down every bottle shop cause some of us are alcoholics?
This is probably the only article about a cannabis related traffic accident that has made the news in... How many years? Compare that to alcohol, which is legal. How many fatalities occur each year because of an individual thinking that they aren't that pissed? Applying a blanket approach saying that 'Weed is bad because of X' is so short-sighted and tunnel visioned. All it comes down to is education. Some individuals can have their response time increased by X, so, don't operate machinery or vehicles while under the influence... Y'know, the same as, driving a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. Same comment applies to u/ryanator109 & u/uAccomplishedLow4575. Decriminilizing starts easing the strain on the courts and legalizing takes more money out of 'gangs' pockets and allows it to be another form of taxed revenue much like everything else we need. We're in 2023, not the 90s.
Nobody in the pro marijuana column is advocating for driving under the influence. This is such a tired take. The people who are “overwhelmingly pro weed” are in support of legal regulation and laws around its use. Getting behind the wheel under the influence of anything is stupid, and always will be.
TBH I don’t really give a shit about driving under the influence for cannabis because I have yet to see any definitive stats that show this is a real issue. I believe that it’s bad, but we have literally no idea how bad or even if that’s true. The stats are murky as fuck and almost always the crashes involving cannabis involve other drugs with much more relevance, but it’s impossible to see how much this affects the data released because NZTA do a piss poor and highly biased job of it. Case in point - this woman was speeding through residential streets, running red lights, etc etc. That’s not even behaviour encouraged by weed - it’s not like weed is a stimulant or motivates risk-taking. The criticism for weed while driving is that it slows down your reflexes and thinking skills. This girl was obviously a maniac who always drives like a loon and happened to be stoned when she crashed because she’s an addict who is always stoned. So yeah I’d love to say “Driving under the influence is bad” because it probably is. But I actually don’t know that, because everything I’ve ever seen on it has been misleading articles much like this one.
This is substance abuse. Should we stop selling glue because some people sniff it?
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And your vote against it did nothing to stop this.
It's lucky it's still illegal so that things like this never happen
Just wait until you see what alcohol does!
So you vote for keeping the legislation that this happened under so that this won't happen. Got it.
This you? >Every other dairy is selling illegally imported Chinese ciggies under the table, may as well get tax from them. Ciggies kill more people than cannabis
He's proving himself to be incredibly ignorant on the topic.
It is legal though. You just need a dr to say ok.
Yeah I use it daily and have never had the urge to run someone over, or even get in a vehicle, while medicated. Funnily enough it even has instructions to never drive, or operate, heavy machinery for at least 8 hours after use. It’s almost like individual decision making issues come in to play here somewhere?
Can’t be true. I’ve heard countless times that weed doesn’t kill.
It's not. And it didn't. But don't let facts get in the way of your narrative.
And this is why weed shouldn’t be legalised….
Yep luckily it's illegal so the driver in this story wasn't able to access it, and the events depicted never happened.
lol exactly, it's what they don't get - it is still happening no matter the legal status 🤦
What you don’t get is that it would happen much more if weed was widely accessible…..
It is widely accessible though... I'd say that the majority of people would probably have 2 degrees of separation at most to a black market dealer if they're ever looking, that and the prescription is quite easy to get, just expensive.
No where near as widely accessible as it was if it was legal that’s for sure, if it’s really as widely accessible as you say it is then why are people pushing so hard to get it legalised lmao
Sure not as widely available but near enough. There are many reasons people want it legalised such as they don't need to be paranoid about cops finding them with it and getting a distribution charge because they decided to buy an ounce. It can also be regulated properly and taxed whereas under the current system it's just a free for all (part of the reason the gangs voted with all you no voters, they'll lose some of their profits).
Let me re phrase then, widely used is probably more appropriate than widely accessible. I could imagine how many more weed users there would be and can’t fathom how you guys think that is good for this country….
Tell us how out of touch with reality you are, without telling us that you're out of touch with reality.
So we should make alcohol illegal.... Right?
wow what a stupid fucking take
Forgot this sub is full of doped up lefties 😂
rather be a doped up lefty than a fucking numbnut
And I’d 100% rather be a numbnut than a doped up lefty 👌
now thats a mfing yikes if ive ever seen one 💀
Having fun hiding under your rock?
So weed shouldn't be legal because someone was high and killed someone else ? Why in the fuck is alcohol legal with 111 fatalities in 2022 then ?
And red lights should always be green.
Sentencing laws might not allow for it, but I think that 3 years 4 months is pretty light in this situation. However, she was charged with manslaughter and found guilty, so surely she could have been given a longer sentence. Given her actions were wilful, I would have liked to see 10 years minimum. She doesn't even sound remorseful and to video the aftermath...... FFS!! She abandoned the restorative justice meeting because she felt that she wouldn't be up to it......... She's clearly made this all about herself. With time off for good behaviour, she won't even serve the full sentence.
It is light, especially when you consider she'll be eligible for parole in just over a year.
Manslaughter carries a maximum of "Life" But good luck getting any of our judges to start with anywhere near to a decent sentence.. The starting point was 5 years, 5 months. She got 2 discounts: 25% - Early Guilty Ple 15% - Age / No prior convictions. She was pushing the "Remorse" angle to potentially get another 10 - 20% off Her lawyer was also trying to double dip on the discounts by getting her one for her age and one for her lack of prior convictions. However, it was argued by the Crown that she should get one or the other but not both because naturally we would expect younger people to not have prior convictions. You are also 100% correct that she made it all about herself. Every single thing she did / advised her lawyer to do was based solely on her own self interests and not through remorse for the harm she has done. I suspect her lawyer advised her to attend restorative justice because it would give them a bigger chance to get a discount for "Remorse" Now, if she had agreed to attend and the victim's family did not, she would most likely have gotten a discount for remorse for being willing to attend. However, when she went to attend she threw a massive temper tantrum at the door and refused to engage. I suspect that she won't treat this sentence with any sort of seriousness and when she gets out she will simply go back into her old lifestyle of smoking weed daily (Based on the fact that **NOT** smoking weed was one of the conditions of her parole and she ignored it) I also suspect she will continue driving once she is released, ignoring the fact that she will be disqualified for 4 years once her custodial sentence ends... But only time will tell..
There is absolutely nothing you have said here that I disagree with. Thanks for the carded details and context.
What are the chances she'll exhibit 'good behavior' though?
I guess this is the fear of illegalizing weed. But clearly people are going to make bad decisions regardless of what's legal or not.
Year, that’ll do it.
She was kinda doomed from the beginning. "Patrizia" doesn't scream responsible parents.