TOPIC

We are not saying marijuana is "safe" or free of risk — no substance is. What we are saying is that when Americans are forced to choose between an imperfect option, public policy should not stand in the way of a third, safer one. This resource from the Marijuana Policy Project says it all:

Nearly three in five Americans say alcohol or tobacco is more harmful than marijuana. Yet groups like Smart Approaches to Marijuana continue to argue the public has it backwards — insisting alcohol's long cultural history makes it acceptable while cannabis remains uniquely dangerous. The data doesn't bear that out. Also, if we are looking at substances that have a historical place in society, the first documented use of medicinal cannabis was around 2,700 BCE.

According to the CDC, alcohol is the most commonly used substance among Americans 12 and older, and excessive drinking kills about 488 people every day — roughly 20 an hour. A 2024 CDC report found annual alcohol-attributable deaths rose 29% in just a few years, from about 138,000 to 178,000. The NIAAA adds more: 12,429 alcohol-impaired-driving deaths in 2023 (30% of all traffic fatalities), nearly 28 million Americans with Alcohol Use Disorder, and over 4 million ER visits in 2020–2021 alone. Alcohol shows up in about one in six drug overdose deaths. Meanwhile, SAMHSA data show millions of teenagers drinking — and binge drinking — alcohol each month.

MARIJUANA, BY COMPARISON

No one has died from a cannabis overdose. But yet we as society celebrate binge drinking by both adults and underage students when such actions result in thousands of deaths each year. That doesn't mean marijuana has zero downsides — dependency, impaired driving, and other risks are real — but they don't approach the scale of alcohol's toll on health, society, and highways. Given that gap, restricting adults' access to the safer choice doesn't protect public health; it undermines it.

We want to give a shout out to “Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?”  This book and the movement that followed were well ahead of its time.