nugs

Marijuana Facts and Myths

How dangerous is smoking weed?

If you were to load three Boeings’ 747’s with 450 individuals and crash them into the earth, every day for one year, this would be about how many people die from cigarette smoking annually.  The Center for Disease Control states,

• The adverse health effects from cigarette smoking account for an estimated 443,000 deaths, or nearly one of every five deaths, each year in the United States.
• More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined.
• Smoking causes an estimated 90% of all lung cancer deaths in men and 80% of all lung cancer deaths in women.
• An estimated 90% of all deaths from chronic obstructive lung disease are caused by smoking.[i]

            As startling and horrible as these figures are with regard to smoking, somehow cigarettes are still legal. In contrast to these well documented figures, are the almost nonexistent mortality rates for marijuana users. In several large studies cited in the British Medical Journal researchers concluded that marijuana users did not have any higher rates of mortality than nonusers.[ii] The argument that marijuana is dangerous simply has no evidence to support its claims. Direct deaths attributed to marijuana use are almost nonexistent. In a comparative study of medical marijuana prescription drug use the results were staggering. Between the years 1997 and 2005 the FDA reported 279 deaths resulting from reactions with medical marijuana. But in those same years the FDA reported 11,687 deaths resulting from prescription drug interactions.[iii]

            Like most of the ideas presented to people concerning marijuana, the dangers of marijuana use have been exaggerated. Even the 279 deaths cannot be attributed solely to marijuana use because in all of these cases some other drug was involved. One really must question the credibility of marijuana opponents when they constantly use this ridiculous argument to support criminalization of weed.

Content written by the Academic Collective LLC.