Quote from peilthetraveler:
As for overdosing on Marijuana it happens and people die from it. For Marijuana ONLY overdose deaths (where no other drug was involved) the number is about 35 per 100 million people. Sounds pretty low doesnt it? But lets look at alcohol only related overdose deaths. That number is 106 out of every 100 million people (according to CDC). So as an overdose drug, alcohol is about 3 times worse than marijuana. The reason people think there are zero marijuana deaths is that because people who smoke marijuana generally drink, or do other drugs and the other drug gets all the credit for the car accidents and suicides.
I can quote sources too.
"Animal tests have revealed that extremely high doses of cannabinoids are needed to have lethal effect. This has led scientists to conclude that the ratio of the amount of cannabinoids necessary to get a person intoxicated (i.e., stoned) relative to the amount necessary to kill them is 1 to 40,000. In other words, to overdose,
you would have to consume 40,000 times as much marijuana as you needed to get stoned. In contrast, the ratio for alcohol varies between 1 to 4 and 1 to 10.
Source: Cannabis and alcohol toxicity is compared in Marijuana Reconsidered, ibid., p. 227. Yearly alcohol overdoses was taken from "Drug Prohibition in the United States: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives" by Ethan A. Nadelmann, Science, Vol 245, 1 September 1989, p. 943.
To everyone else who has the
flat wrong opinion on the Marijuana debate let me state some facts. The war on Marijuana, and the war on legalizing marijuana, have been dismal failures of both policy and rational thought
in every respect.
I could write a "top 50 list" but i think a "top 4" will suffice for the internetz:
1. It has not hindered the distribution of marijuana by any reasonable amount.
2. It costs billions of tax payer dollars to finance which could be going toward much more socially productive programs.
3. It imprisons thousands of non-violent offenders costing the tax payers
even more money while also removing these people from the workforce.
4. It is not significantly more dangerous to the user than any other carcinogen producing substance. When you burn something, whether it be marijuana, your roasted morning coffee, or your char-grilled steak,
you get carcinogens and other cancer causing by-products as a result. So save everyone the speech about the health effects of marijuana unless you're going to give a lecture on the potential health hazards of burning
anything carbon based.
These facts are not debatable. You people must know this. The only potential argument you have is that the legalization of Marjuana would result in some absurd doomsday scenario where everyone turns into a lazy pothead. Unfortunately, this has not come to fruition in any country that has legalized its use. This idea that people can not control themselves without the nanny state not only gives us a window into your cynical, fearful mind, it's also completely un-American. And by the way, been to Boston recently? Marijuana has been decriminalized there since '08, and last i checked the city hasn't gone up in smoke and potato chip wrappers.
And no, I don't smoke marijuana. And fuck you for thinking I would if you didn't force me not to.