The legalization of marijuana in Colorado brought with it a “new era” of impaired driving, the Colorado State Patrol said Thursday.

Of more than 5,500 drug- and alcohol-related tickets served to impaired drivers in 2014, 354 of them involved only marijuana.

CSP released statewide data late Thursday; no county or city breakdown was available.

Overall, 18.5 percent of citations for driving under the influence, or DUI, and driving under the influence of drugs, DUID, involved marijuana.

More than 1,000 pot-induced citations were issued, which included 674 where marijuana was not the only factor contributing to impairment.

Anyone suspected to be driving while impaired can opt for a blood test, said trooper Josh Lewis. Drivers with more than 5 nanograms of THC in their blood are legally impaired. THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

January, the month when recreational weed legally went on sale, April, the month containing pot enthusiasts’ “holiday” 4/20, and December had the highest numbers of marijuana-related citations issued. Lewis said the numbers for those months were only slightly higher than others.

The Colorado Department of Transportation has started a “Drive High, Get a DUI” campaign since it found last year that 43 percent of Colorado drivers didn’t see a problem with driving while high.

A more recent study showed that 21 percent of recreational pot users weren’t aware they could get tickets for driving high, and that more than half of them drove within two hours of smoking or consuming it.

“We won’t be satisfied until everyone in Colorado takes driving high seriously, so the need for awareness and education is paramount,” Amy Ford, a CDOT spokeswoman, said in the release.

It’s hard to provide strong guidelines for how long a person should avoid driving after smoking pot or eating edibles laced with the drug, because it affects people differently based on their size, how it’s consumed and how experienced that person is with marijuana.

“Typically, to have that full impairment out, eight hours would be a good recommendation,” Lewis said. “That would be a minimum.”

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