Science Says Smoking Weed is Safer Than Getting Drunk

Photo via Flickr user Torben Hansen.

Should you harbor any anxieties that your recreational marijuana use is bad for your health, light up a joint and forget your worries. Science says your ganja is probably safer than that third glass of whiskey you downed in a poor man’s imitation of Don Draper. A report published in the journal Scientific Reports by researchers in Canada and Germany found that alcohol consumption had a higher risk of death than marijuana use, which had the lowest ranking. Pot, in fact, was found to be 114 times less deadly than alcohol. Heroin, cocaine, and tobacco use were all found to be much deadlier than smoking a joint.

The authors of the study suggest that drug policies should be reformulated to reflect these kinds of findings. The low-risk ranking of marijuana, they say, should “suggest a strict legal regulatory approach rather than the current prohibition approach”, which means legislators should channel their efforts towards decriminalization. Just this week, Alaska became the third state to legalize recreational marijuana use, joining Washington and Colorado. In the Land of the Midnight Sun, you can smoke small amounts of pot (you just can’t sell it). And while recreational marijuana use is still illegal in other states, you can still acquire medicinal weed, although it’s a little bit tougher (and in New York, you can even get it certified kosher).