For years there has been a severe amount of whining by uninformed members of the public, and worse abrasive arrests, convictions, and outlandish sentencing in regards to those who choose to consume marijuana. However, in recent years as stronger advocacy for the plant has grown, and the opinions and attitudes of Americans have changed, more notably with a concentration on where marijuana stacks up in the health category.
According to a recent poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal, Americans are under the belief that Marijuana is less harmful than sugar, alcohol, or tobacco, and the justification seems to be set in very logical circumstances.
Alcohol has been linked to a number of health problems such as heart disease, liver disease, weakened immune systems, and cancer development, and is responsible over 88,000 deaths every year in the United States.
In regards to tobacco, the number of problem that both cigarettes and chewing tobacco cause is too long to bother listing, but the number of deaths that it contributes each year in the United States is about 480,000.
Lastly, a large portion of the public insists that sugar, which without question has contributed to America’s out of control obesity rate, is also more dangerous than marijuana. Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, have all been cast upon Americans by their over consumption of sugar, yet sugar, alcohol, and tobacco, have been legal for centuries, what about this plant that the government has outlawed for being “so dangerous”.
Turns out that in at least 10,000 years of human consumption, there has not been one single documented incident of death contributed to the over consumption of marijuana. In fact, in order for someone to be at risk of dying by marijuana consumption, they would have to take in between 20,000-40,000 times the amount of THC in a joint before they would be at risk of death.
To the contrary, marijuana has been known to slow the spread of cancer, HIV, and reduce suicide rates. Over all, it causes one to think why the government has tried so hard to keep a substance like this out of the hands of the public for so long.
Resource: Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/12/americans-think-that-even_n_49…
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