Stasher MoldyCutter forwarded me a comment he found on a post at the New York Times that answers beautifully the prohibitionist’s claim that “emergency room admissions for marijuana are skyrocketing!”:

15 years of full time emergency medicine and I’ve maybe seen 10 visits to the ER for cannabis – these fall into 2 categories: 1. pot brownies – an unfortunate way to ingest way too much cannabis – unpleasant, but completely non-life threatening. 2. And (the vast majority of those 10 visits) parent who brings in normal appearing teen asking for a drug test for pot (available over the counter, by the way for you parents out there).

I see that “ER visits going up” canard regularly and the writer might as well say “I’m an idiot” – what is a “marijuana related ER visit”? Are they counting every positive urine drug screen? Or just people who come complaining that their pot is too potent? What?

Of all the drug / medicine related misery I’ve seen, the dearth of ER visits I’ve seen due to cannabis suggest that when it comes to drugs, cannabis may be the most benign substance on earth (if you want to measure that by ER visits). Clearly the worst thing about it is that it can get you into serious legal problems (since it’s not legal).

People have always and will always use plants and synthetic compounds to alter their senses – period. When it comes to the drug war, the diagnosis is clear: the treatment is worse than the disease.

Related posts

• [Updated] CASA: Marijuana Potency up 175 Percent, Medical Diagnoses, Treatment Admissions, ER Findings for Teen Marijuana Use up Sharply (4)
• UN agency recommends world stop ‘trivializing’ marijuana dangers (1)
• Marijuana potency surpasses 10 percent, U.S. says (9)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 1:20 pm and is filed under 4:20 NewsHour, Drug Testing, Parents and Kids, Reefer Madness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a trackback from your own site.