Nobody Has Ever Died From Consuming Marijuana

Marijuana is the third most widely used recreational drug in the United States, falling only behind alcohol and tobacco. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cigarette smoking causes over 480,000 deaths annually in the United States. Moreover, alcohol abuse kills over 80,000 Americans each year, whether it comes from disease or alcohol-related traffic incidents. However, the effects of alcoholism are felt not only in the United States. A World Health Organization report from February 2011 stated that alcohol consumption is responsible for four percent of all fatalities worldwide, more than AIDS, tuberculosis, or even violence (Armentano). Indubitably, the problem is not only prevalent in the United States but all around the world.

Even Tylenol can cause liver injury which results in a hundred or so accidental overdoses each year. Unlike alcohol, tobacco, and even Tylenol, cannabis has never caused a single death in its 5,000 years of recorded use. People die as a direct result of alcohol and tobacco literally every single day, but out of the millions of people who use cannabis regularly, not a single death has ever come from consuming it. These numbers speak loud and clear to me as to which substances are harmful to our society. Yet somehow, alcohol and tobacco are both perfectly legal in the United States just long as you are of age, while marijuana is still considered illegal under federal law. It seems like it is time for our country to finally rethink its counterproductive war on drugs.

Since alcohol and tobacco remain legal in the United States, despite causing thousands of deaths each year, it is only right to legalize cannabis and regulate it the same manner. Published recently in the Journal of Psychopharmacology was a paper stating that "a direct comparison of alcohol and cannabis showed that alcohol was considered to be more than twice as harmful as cannabis to users, and five times more harmful as cannabis to others” (Armentano) The United States government classifies cannabis as a Schedule I drug, putting it on the same level as heroin. Schedule II is considered less dangerous than Schedule I, and includes substances such as cocaine, methamphetamine, OxyContin, and hydromorphone. All of these other drugs are far more harmful than cannabis, so why are we still treating this plant as if it is something dangerous? I believe that our nation’s federal drug laws are outdated, and the American public is finally beginning to realize that.  

Armentano, Paul. "Alcohol or Cannabis? No Question Which Substance Poses a Greater Risk to Health.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 23 Aug. 2013. Web. 08 Apr. 2014.

This was an article written by Paul Armentano which was published in The Huffington Post on August 23^rd, 2013. This article provided me with the statistic regarding alcohol fatalities in the United States as well as around the world. The author clearly made an effort to include information that was relevant not only to the United States, but to the whole world. Armentano also points out that nobody has ever died from consuming cannabis, and he mentions that he agrees with President Obama's statement that cannabis is far less harmful than alcohol. Furthermore, the article also included several studies which compared alcohol to cannabis and concluded that alcohol is more of a danger to our society.