Myth #1: “Marijuana is a (more) Dangerous Drug”
A common misconception surrounding marijuana is the idea that it is either as dangerous or more dangerous than the vast amount of other drugs available. This false belief helps many prohibitionists to justify their hypocritical stance in the acceptance of tobacco and alcohol as legal drugs for responsible adults, yet consider drugs like marijuana as “too dangerous” to risk legalization. Stigmas may influence one’s personal beliefs, but they should never influence scientific evidence.
One of the most thorough studies surrounding this topic is titled, Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse. Let’s take a look at the impressive roster of persons leading this study:
- Professor David Nutt
Pyschopharmacology Unit (University of Bristol, Bristol, UK) - Dr. Leslie A King
Forensic Science Services (London, UK) - William Saulsbury
Police Foundation (London, UK) - Professor Colin Blakemore, FRS, PhD
Medical Research Council (London, UK)
Department of Physiology, Anatomy, and Genetics (Oxford, UK)
As you can see, this is a team of highly skilled, highly educated, highly diverse professionals. In fact, thanks to their enormous amount of work, I will be referencing entire sections of their research; organizing it to feature/focus on marijuana. I will do my best to italicize and quote every chunk which is either taken directly from the study or paraphrased.
What was the purpose?
The purpose of this study was to analyze and critique the UK’s drug classification system, which is very similar to the United States’ drug classification system, in hopes of devising a new scale that would better–and more accurately–assign a substance’s legality as a reflection of the substance’s actual ability to harm.
Harmful drugs are regulated according to classification systems that purport to relate to the harms and risks of each drug. However, the methodology and processes underlying classification systems are generally neither specified nor transparent, which reduces confidence in their accuracy and undermines health education messages.
In other words, if the true necessity for a drug-classification/scheduling system is to protect society, then it should be based on a system which is scientifically logical, transparent, and just plain makes sense. Otherwise, it is not really a “system”, rather, just an assignment of drugs via dart-board organization.
In fact, the study goes on to say:
However, the process by which harms are determined is often undisclosed, and when made public can be ill-defined, opaque, and seemingly arbitrary
(…)
The current classification system has evolved in an unsystematic way from somewhat arbitrary foundations with seemingly little scientific basis.
From here, the study introduces us to a new, more logical system for the classification of drugs, as well as providing numbers and visuals which reclassify current drugs under the new system. (Results/graphs can be found on pages 4 & 5, pages 2 & 3 contain information regarding how the study was constructed.)
