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.