Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) took a moment Thursday afternoon to remind everyone how many people have overdosed on pot…. “Spoiler alert: it’s zero,” Blumenauer said at a press conference on Thursday. “The first time it happens, it’ll be news and people will know.”
For longer than you can say “Reefer Madness,” marijuana has been demonized as a “gateway drug,” a precursor to getting hooked on things like heroin or cocaine. Despite absolutely no evidence to support this contention, it’s been accepted as fact and used to propagandize generations. Meanwhile, alcohol, which is infinitely more dangerous and has done far more damage, is given a free pass. The difference is that humankind is addicted to alcohol and so it’s socially accepted. Marijuana has historically been viewed as the drug of choice for slackers and stoners, people with no motivation or desire to improve their lives. And alcohol is for high achievers and those driven to succeed?
With several states, now including Oregon, having legalized marijuana, it seems a good time to question why marijuana possession is still a federal crime. Why is it that I can go to prison in some states for having a joint in my possession…but I can have as much alcohol as I want, no questions asked? The amount of money, effort, and law enforcement resources spent criminalizing marijuana users is absurd…and it serves no point. Marijuana users are seldom a threat to anyone but themselves. Alcohol does far more damage to society, but because of our collective addiction, we continue to deny the undeniable.
Relative to alcohol, marijuana is harmless. While alcohol poisoning is very real and not at all difficult to achieve, marijuana toxicity is such that it’s highly unlikely that someone could die from an overdose:
In the long history of humanity’s marijuana use, not a single person has ever died from a weed overdose. According to a 1988 ruling from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a marijuana smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times the amount of THC in a joint in order to be at risk of dying.
A 2009 study from American Scientist on the relative toxicity of recreational drugs showed that using only 10 times the “effective” dose of alcohol could be fatal, whereas more than 1,000 times the effective dose of marijuana would have to be used to be possibly fatal.
Right; you’d die from smoke inhalation long before ingesting a lethal level of marijuana. The truth is out there, but it’s inconvenient…and so it’s ignored.
Legalizing marijuana isn’t about money or wanting to get high. It’s about common sense. It’s time we treated marijuana as we do alcohol- tax and regulate it. Not only will it improve local tax bases, it will allow states to keep a reign on the market, by controlling the supply and quality of the product. All one need do is look at the experience of Colorado and Washington, where making marijuana legal has been a net positive- arrests are down, tax revenues are up, and entrepreneurs are making money. At last check, the social order hadn’t crumbled into abject chaos.
It’s time we did the right thing, lose the “Reefer Madness” mentality, and legalize marijuana nationally…because NO ONE has died from a marijuana overdose, something that can’t be said for alcohol.
Then again, for some folks, common sense makes no sense at all.
