Myth #1: “Marijuana is a (more) Dangerous Drug”
What if we focus only on Health?
The study in question was not done specifically to make an argument for any single drug. Rather, it was designed to address the flaws of the UK’s (and other countries’) drug scheduling systems.
I, however, am more interested in the specific health dangers of the above listed substances. If you remember, the study above included social harms, which were primarily observations regarding how a substance affects society, its legality, its cost for enforcement (such as police), etc. If, for example, an illegal substance were to be made legal and become accepted by society (after a period of time), there could be an expected reduction in stigma, and thus “social harm” level.
Because of this, if we want to only view the direct health dangers of the substances, it is fair to remove the social harms portion and recalculate means based only on Physical Harms and Dependence.
After recalculating and reordering the substances based on their new mean, we have a slightly different list (again, in order of most to least dangerous):
- Heroin
- Cocaine
- Barbiturates
- Street methadone
- Ketamine
- Amphetamine
- Tobacco
- Benzodiazepines
- Alcohol
- Buprenorphine
- 4-MTA
- Methylphenidate
- Cannabis
- LSD
- Anabolic Steroids
- Solvents
- Ecstasy
- GHB
- Alkyl Nitrates
- Khat
Substance Harm Means revised without consideration of "Social Harm". (Click to Enlarge)
Dependence/addictiveness of substances, like everything else, varies from study to study. For example, in a study where doctors ranked various substances in terms of how addictive they were (among other factors), marijuana was shown to be equal or less than the addictiveness of caffeine.
For a more pure visualization of physical health, we can remove the dependence factor to see how these drugs rank purely based on their physical harm. If we do so, we have another shift in ranks:
- Heroin
- Cocaine
- Barbiturates
- Ketamine
- Street methadone
- Amphetamine
- Benzodiazepines
- Buprenorphine
- Anabolic Steroids
- 4-MTA
- Alcohol
- Methylphenidate
- Solvents
- Tobacco
- LSD
- Ecstasy
- Cannabis
- Alkyl nitrates
- GHB
- Khat
A bar graph based only on the physical harm means of substances. (Click to Enlarge)
In conclusion…
Governments around the world, including the United States, have adopted arbitrary systems in which to classify drugs. One such example of this hypocrisy is marijuana, which is shown to be a relatively safe (if not very safe) substance with many benefitial uses. No reasonable person presented with these facts should believe marijuana is a “dangerous substance”, especially in a world where legal substances kill more than illegal ones.
