NIDA International Program Director Steven W. Gust, Ph.D., chaired a session on marijuana and driving at the 2016 International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety (ICADTS) meeting in Gramado, Brazil. The October 17 plenary session represented a significant change in ICADTS programming to focus on this global public health challenge. Marilyn Huestis, Ph.D., University of Maryland, discussed the impact on traffic safety of low-dose alcohol use in conjunction with cannabis use. Jan Ramaekers, Ph.D., Maastricht University, The Netherlands, reported on how cannabis impairs driving and the effect of cannabis use history on neurocognitive function. Renata Limberger, Ph.D., Center for Drug and Alcohol Research (CPAD), Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil, presented data on cannabis driving impairment in Brazil.
Former NIDA Hubert H. Humphrey Drug Abuse Research Fellow Flavio Pechansky, M.D., Ph.D., M.Sc., CPAD/UFRGS, chaired both the scientific and organizing committees for the ICADTS conference. He also reported on saliva testing for drugs other than alcohol in Brazil. Former NIDA INVEST fellow Guilherme Borges, Ph.D., Mexican Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatría Ramón de la Fuente Muñiz, presented a case-crossover study of alcohol and road traffic injuries in Latin America and the Caribbean.