A new study has quantified the risk of death associated with an array
of legal and illegal drugs to find that alcohol was the deadliest of
them all, followed by heroin and cocaine. Marijuana, on the other hand,
was associated with the lowest risk of death. The study even suggests
that we’ve been overestimating how dangerous it is, which means it’s
even safer than we thought.
The study, led by food chemist and
toxicologist Dirk W. Lachenmeier, from the Chemical and Veterinary
Investigation Laboratory of Karlsruhe in Germany, figured out the
mortality risk associated with a range of substances by comparing each
of their lethal doses with the typical amount used. They refer to this
ratio as the ‘margin of exposure' (MOE), which can be used to measure
how likely a user is, on average, to unwittingly overdose on their drug
of choice.
Here’s what they found, as reported by Christopher Ingraham at The Washington Post, who says weed came out roughly 114 times less deadly than alcohol, according to the margin of exposure:
In fact, of all the drugs analysed, marijuana was the only one that
could be classified as having a ‘low mortality risk’, while alcohol and
tobacco were classified as 'high risk’ substances.
As Sean O’Kane notes at The Verge,
these classifications are based solely on the substances themselves,
and do not take into account the environmental risk factors associated
with some of them. For example, we shouldn’t take this to mean that
moderate alcohol use is more risky than regular heroin use, he says,
because factors such as dirty needles were not considered in the scope
of this study.
While previous studies
have also found marijuana to be the safest recreational drug - in terms
of risk of death - this is the first study to conclude that that the
danger of marijuana use is being overestimated. The team reports in the journal Scientific Reports:
"Many
governments in Europe have favoured more restrictive policies with
respect to illicit drugs than for alcohol or tobacco, on the grounds
that they regard both illicit drug abuse and related problems as a
significantly larger problem for society. Drug rankings can therefore be
useful to inform policy makers and the public about the relative
importance of licit drugs (including prescription drugs) and illicit
drugs for various types of harm.
"Our MOE results confirm
previous drug rankings based on other approaches. Specifically, the
results confirm that the risk of cannabis may have been overestimated in the past. At least for the endpoint of
mortality, the MOE for THC/cannabis in both individual and
population-based assessments would be above safety thresholds (e.g. 100
for data based on animal experiments). In contrast, the risk of alcohol
may have been commonly underestimated.”
The team suggests
that, based on these findings, governments around the world should be
focussing their efforts more on mitigating the dangerous effects of
alcohol and tobacco rather than on illicit drugs, because chances are,
it’ll save more lives. They add that the strict legislations associated
with marijuana in many countries around the world don’t add up when you
consider its low risk classification in their study. In fact, they say
that an analysis of government classifications of drugs "were often
found to lack a scientific basis”, and only in the last 10 years have
they begun to be based on scientific, rather than anecdotal, evidence.
Of
course, this study is only looking at death, specifically, as a risk
associated with marijuana. It’s not saying that the drug is completely
safe, or that it shouldn’t be regulated, because while it might be hard
to die from using it, there arestudies that suggest you risk developing certain mental health issues, and other disorders in doing so.
A
new study has quantified the risk of death associated with an array of
legal and illegal drugs to find that alcohol was the deadliest of them
all, followed by heroin and cocaine. Marijuana, on the other hand, was
associated with the lowest risk of death. The study even suggests that
we’ve been overestimating how dangerous it is, which means it’s even
safer than we thought.
The study, led by food chemist and
toxicologist Dirk W. Lachenmeier, from the Chemical and Veterinary
Investigation Laboratory of Karlsruhe in Germany, figured out the
mortality risk associated with a range of substances by comparing each
of their lethal doses with the typical amount used. They refer to this
ratio as the ‘margin of exposure' (MOE), which can be used to measure
how likely a user is, on average, to unwittingly overdose on their drug
of choice.
Here’s what they found, as reported by Christopher Ingraham at The Washington Post, who says weed came out roughly 114 times less deadly than alcohol, according to the margin of exposure:
In
fact, of all the drugs analysed, marijuana was the only one that could
be classified as having a ‘low mortality risk’, while alcohol and
tobacco were classified as 'high risk’ substances.
As Sean O’Kane notes at The Verge,
these classifications are based solely on the substances themselves,
and do not take into account the environmental risk factors associated
with some of them. For example, we shouldn’t take this to mean that
moderate alcohol use is more risky than regular heroin use, he says,
because factors such as dirty needles were not considered in the scope
of this study.
While previous studies
have also found marijuana to be the safest recreational drug - in terms
of risk of death - this is the first study to conclude that that the
danger of marijuana use is being overestimated. The team reports in the journal Scientific Reports:
"Many
governments in Europe have favoured more restrictive policies with
respect to illicit drugs than for alcohol or tobacco, on the grounds
that they regard both illicit drug abuse and related problems as a
significantly larger problem for society. Drug rankings can therefore be
useful to inform policy makers and the public about the relative
importance of licit drugs (including prescription drugs) and illicit
drugs for various types of harm.
"Our MOE results confirm
previous drug rankings based on other approaches. Specifically, the
results confirm that the risk of cannabis may have been overestimated in
the past. At least for the endpoint of mortality, the MOE for
THC/cannabis in both individual and population-based assessments would
be above safety thresholds (e.g. 100 for data based on animal
experiments). In contrast, the risk of alcohol may have been commonly
underestimated.”
The team suggests that, based on these
findings, governments around the world should be focussing their efforts
more on mitigating the dangerous effects of alcohol and tobacco rather
than on illicit drugs, because chances are, it’ll save more lives. They
add that the strict legislations associated with marijuana in many
countries around the world don’t add up when you consider its low risk
classification in their study. In fact, they say that an analysis of
government classifications of drugs "were often found to lack a
scientific basis”, and only in the last 10 years have they begun to be
based on scientific, rather than anecdotal, evidence.
Of course,
this study is only looking at death, specifically, as a risk associated
with marijuana. It’s not saying that the drug is completely safe, or
that it shouldn’t be regulated, because while it might be hard to die
from using it, there arestudies that suggest you risk developing certain mental health issues, and other disorders in doing so.
As Christopher Ingraham points out at The Washington Post, basically
everything you put in your body, whether it's sugar, salt, or heroin,
comes with associated risks. What's inconsistent is the way governments
around the world try to mitigate these risks through regulation.
source:sciencealert