The Cato Institute's new blog, Cato Unbound, is featuring a great essay by Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and coauthor of Marijuana is Safer: So why are driving people to drink?

The piece, "Cannabis’ Impact on Health Justifies Its Legalization, Not Its Criminal Prohibition," makes the case for ending marijuana prohibition by highlighting its negative impacts on public health. In particular, he highlights several new studies reflecting the safety of marijuana compared to alcohol and their relative impacts on public health.

Several objective bodies have sought to assess the potential costs that marijuana use may impose on modern society. These calculations have consistently estimated the social costs associated with marijuana’s use to be relatively minimal. For example, a 2009 assessment published in the British Columbia Mental Health and Addictions Journal estimated that health-related costs per user are eight times higher for drinkers of alcoholic beverages than they are for those who use cannabis and are more than 40 times higher for tobacco smokers.[11] [SAFER emphasis included] “In terms of [health-related] costs per user: tobacco-related health costs are over $800 per user, alcohol-related health costs are much lower at $165 per user, and cannabis-related health costs are the lowest at $20 per user,” investigators concluded.

In fact, no less than the World Health Organization has concluded: “Overall, most of these risks (associated with marijuana) are small to moderate in size. In aggregate they are unlikely to produce public health problems comparable in scale to those currently produced by alcohol and tobacco. On existing patterns of use, cannabis poses a much less serious public health problem than is currently posed by alcohol and tobacco in Western societies.”[12]

 Click HERE to read the full essay.

As Chicago considers decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, the media there has been looking deeper into the issue. The headline of one feature story from the Chicago Sun-Times caught our eye: "User says her marijuana is ‘like a fine glass of wine,’ should be legal."

The piece highlights a professional couple who consume marijuana and believe it should be legal. As the headline mentions, the woman, Kate, sees some similarities between marijuana and alcohol. 

Kate, 48, smokes about five times a week after work and on the weekends. Tom, 52, smokes almost as frequently.

They both have high-paying jobs in the financial industry. And they see themselves as connoisseurs.

“It’s like a fine glass of wine where you twirl it, swish it in your mouth. You savor it,” Kate said. “Some kinds are evergreen-smelling. Some are orangey, sticky. We like to try different strains and compare.”

The article then goes on to discuss the couple's belief that marijuana is far less harmful than alcohol and ought to be treated that way.  In fact, the man, Tom, mentions that he has taught his children that marijuana is the safer choice.

[K]ate, Tom and [NORML member Dan] Linn insist marijuana is less dangerous than other drugs or alcohol.

They strongly support the legalization of pot, which they equate with lifting the prohibition on alcohol in the 1933 with the 21st Amendment.

“As far as I know, nobody has ever died from an overdose of cannabis,” Linn said. “People die all the time from alcohol poisoning.”

Tom and Kate sometimes have a cocktail or glass of wine while they are smoking. But Tom said he tells his kids that between alcohol and pot, alcohol is the bigger evil.

“I don’t see how anybody who has sense can say alcohol should be legal but marijuana should be illegal,” Tom said.

 Click HERE to read the entire article.

A new study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology concludes that alcohol is far more dangerous than marijuana. It also suggests that even if marijuana were legal and more people used it, there still wouldn't be remotely as problematic as alcohol. Click HERE to view the entire report on-line.

Alcohol was confirmed as the most harmful drug to others and the most harmful drug overall (Figure 6). A direct comparison of alcohol and cannabis showed that alcohol was considered to be more than twice as harmful as cannabis to users, and five times as harmful as cannabis to others (Nutt et al., 2010)... [SAFER's emphasis added]

Of course, a major reason why alcohol scored so highly on the ‘harms to others’ scale was the fact that it is very widely consumed, with maybe four times more regular users than cannabis and on average a longer period of lifetime use. It is interesting to speculate what might happen if the roles were reversed, or at least both drugs were equally available... As there are few areas of harm that each drug can produce where cannabis scores more highly than alcohol, we suggest that even if there were no legal impediment to cannabis use it would be unlikely to be more harmful than alcohol. 

A great write-up about the study has been posted to AlterNet by Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and coauthor of Marijuana is Safer: So why are we driving people to drink?