Number of Deaths Caused by Marijuana Much More than 0
From time-to-time proponents of marijuana legalization throw out some fuzzy statistics claiming no one has ever died from marijuana.
Case-in-point, earlier this month a group in Arkansas advocating major changes in our state’s marijuana laws tweeted the following:
Alcohol kills 88,000/year in the U.S. It’s not even a medicine. No one has died from cannabis—ever. @TomCottonAR #GetEducated #arpx #arnews
— AR Compassion (@arcompassion) March 12, 2015
“No one has ever died from cannabis.” Let’s investigate this claim.
Unpacking the Statistics on Alcohol and Marijuana
In the tweet above, Arkansans for Compassionate Care is apparently citing a statistic from the Center for Disease Control on the number of deaths from alcohol every year (88,000, on average). If we read how the CDC arrived at that figure, we see it was by calculating the number of alcohol-related accidents and health problems.
In other words, it isn’t simply that 88,000 people die from blood alcohol poisoning (which some might describe as an “alcohol overdose”) each year. Alcohol is contributing to the deaths of about 88,000 people each year in the form of heart and liver problems, car crashes, and so on.
These are what the CDC calls “alcohol attributable deaths” (you can see a full list of them here). They are deaths cause by something that was a direct effect of alcohol use.
So let’s take a look at marijuana-attributable deaths. Has marijuana really never killed anyone, as so many of its proponents claim?
This afternoon the Arkansas Senate passed a good, pro-life bill.