Over the past 20 years, 23 states and the District of Columbia have\nlegalized marijuana for medical\nuse.\nDespite these changes to state laws, opponents continue to argue that\nmarijuana causes more harm than good. A new\nstudy refutes\ntheir claims and shows that marijuana is safer than alcohol and tobacco,\nand researchers and policymakers may have overestimated the risks\nassociated with its use.
\nResearchers Use Novel Approach to Compare Mortality Risks
\nResearch conducted by Dirk Lachenmeier and Jürgen Rehm, and published in\nScientific Reports in January 2015, investigated the mortality risk\nassociated with seven substances by comparing the lethal dose of each\nsubstance with the typical amount used. This ratio, referred to as the\nmargin of exposure (MOE), was used to determine the risk of dying from\nan overdose of each of the substances.
\nThe MOE is a novel method for comparing the mortality risk of different\nsubstances. Introduced by the European Food Safety Authority in\n2005\nas an approach for assessing the risk of toxic compounds, it had only\never been used in the addiction field for evaluating substances in\nalcoholic beverages. Previous attempts to compare the dangers of\nsubstances of abuse were based largely on anecdotal, rather than\nscientific, evidence, which meant that policymakers had to rely on\neducated guesses and survey data from developed nations when making\nlegislative decisions. Only in the past decade have researchers begun to\nuse robust scientific techniques to classify the mortality risks of\nparticular substances of abuse. However, many of these approaches were\nbased on expert panel judgments on harm indicators, such as intoxication\nand physical and psychological dependence.
\nEvidence for Marijuana's Safety Grows
\nLachenmeier and Rehm's research revealed that, of all the substances\nanalyzed, alcohol posed the highest mortality risk at an individual\nlevel, followed by heroin, cocaine, tobacco, ecstasy, methamphetamine\nand marijuana. Alcohol was found to be about 114 times more deadly than\nmarijuana, which was the only substance that was classified as having a\nlow mortality risk. The researchers' classifications were based solely\non the substances themselves and did not take into account environmental\nrisk factors, such as the sharing of contaminated needles by intravenous\ndrug users. Previous studies, including a comparison of the toxicity of\ncommonly abused\nsubstances\npublished in the journal Addiction in June 2004, ranked marijuana as\nsafer than alcohol and tobacco, but it was not known that the\ndiscrepancy between their mortality risks was this large.
\nResearchers Call for Changes to Federal Marijuana Laws
\nDespite their known health risks, alcohol and tobacco are exempted from\nthe Controlled Substances Act due to cultural and economic reasons.\nAlcohol and tobacco have been acceptable substances in U.S. culture\nsince well before the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, and they are two of\nthe most widely used\nsubstances\nnationally. The researchers believe that the risks of alcohol and\ntobacco may have been underestimated in the past, and are urging federal\ngovernment to focus their efforts more on mitigating the harmful effects\nof alcohol and tobacco than on other substances, such as marijuana.
\nIn contrast, the risks of marijuana may have been overestimated. For the\nmortality endpoint alone, the findings showed marijuana's MOE to be\nabove safety thresholds at the individual and population levels. There\nhas never been a case of a cannabis overdose death. This lends weight to\nthe argument that marijuana should be removed from Schedule I of the\nControlled Substances Act, a category reserved for the most dangerous\nsubstances.
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