Marijuana overdose fatality rates remained at constant level throughout 2015

Thursday, January 07, 2016 by: Daniel Barker
Tags: marijuana, overdose rates, Big Pharma

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(NaturalNews) In late December 2015, the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its yearly statistics regarding overdose death rates from various legal and illegal drugs.

Although overdose death rates are on the increase for several types of drugs, overdose deaths from marijuana remained exactly the same as for the year before.

In other words, the number stayed at zero.

That's right – in 2015, not one single person died from smoking or ingesting marijuana, and no one ever has.

Despite all the scare tactics and anti-marijuana propaganda, the fact remains that the recreational use of cannabis is essentially harmless – not to mention its medicinal value, which has been thoroughly proven in dozens of studies.

The biggest drawback of using marijuana? Jail time...

And while some states have legalized the use of the herb, either for recreational or medicinal purposes, or both – and with several others moving in the same direction – there are still many places where people are being arrested and jailed for using, growing or selling an innocuous plant which happens to have dozens of legitimate uses.

States in which recreational marijuana has been legalized are reporting not only a huge boost in tax revenues, but in some cases, an actual drop in violent crime rates. A case in point is Colorado, where the recreational use of marijuana was legalized in 2014.

From a report published by the Drug Policy Alliance^[PDF]:

According to data released by the city of Denver, violent crime and property crime in Denver decreased in 2014. Violent crime in Denver went down by 2.2% in the first 11 months of 2014, compared with the first 11 months of 2013. In the same period, burglaries in Denver decreased by 9.5% and overall property crime decreased by 8.9%.

The report also notes the fact that in Colorado the number traffic fatalities decreased in 2014 – despite predictions to the contrary by those who opposed legalization.

If marijuana were legalized throughout the U.S., crime and incarceration rates would automatically drop, due simply to the fact that so many arrests and prison sentences are marijuana-related.

From the Guardian Liberty Voice:

Every year, the U.S. incarcerates on average of 2.2 million people. This is one of the highest crime rates in the world. Approximately 600,000 of those imprisoned are there because of marijuana possession and distribution. That makes up 30 percent of the inmates. Legalizing cannabis, would drop the incarceration rate astronomically, saving the taxpayers several million dollars. All in all, the positive aspects of pot outweigh the negative aspects, that is why the U.S. should consider legalization.

Deaths from prescription drugs on the increase

While marijuana continues to kill absolutely no one – year after year – overdose deaths from other drugs are on the increase.

Prescription drug overdoses have risen dramatically over the past 13 years. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports "a 2.8-fold increase in the total number of deaths" from prescription drugs in the period between 2001 and 2014.



As with heroin, opioid painkiller use has increased dramatically since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan – along with a corresponding rise in overdose deaths. The problem has become so widespread that it's now being called an "epidemic" by the CDC.

Tens of thousands of Americans overdose on prescription drugs each year as Big Pharma reaps enormous profits. Meanwhile, more than half a million Americans are imprisoned each year for victimless marijuana offenses.

If you ask me, there is something terribly wrong with those figures.

If anyone should be going to prison for drug offenses, it should be those who make millions (actually billions) of dollars peddling the "hard stuff."

We worry about murderous drug cartels in Mexico and elsewhere, when we should be equally as concerned about those in our own nation who legally manufacture and over-prescribe the dangerous drugs that are killing Americans on a daily basis.

It's time to completely legalize marijuana throughout the United States. Don't you agree?

Sources:

DrugAbuse.gov

GuardianLV.com

DrugPolicy.org^[PDF]