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As usual, Pete Guither at DrugWarrant digs up the facts about marijuana and its comparative lack of dangers to other substances, both legal and controlled.

Noting that the Drug Czar’s blog trumpets the need to redouble its efforts (and no doubt its funding) to go after “the non medical use of prescription drugs”, Pete decided to find the actual numbers behind the recent Florida Autopsy report that the Drug Czar was reporting on. Reproducing his table in part:

The highlights? Cocaine, 349 deaths; Alcohol, 160 deaths, Heroin, 29 deaths…

Marijuana (cannibinoids): Zero Deaths Caused.

With Xanax (Alprazolam) coming in at number three, shouldn’t we start considering prison for folks with panic attacks and anxiety disorders?   And look at Soma (Carisoprodol/Meprobamate) coming in ahead of Heroin and Ecstasy combined. Sounds to me like the Drug Czar may advise us soon to start saving up tax dollars to build more prisons.

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The “Gateway Theory” of marijuana prohibition goes like this: marijuana use leads to “hard drug” use, such as cocaine and heroin. Since cocaine and heroin use are “bad”, we must criminalize marijuana to keep our children (and perhaps ourselves) from becoming hard core drug addicts.

The proof of the Gateway Theory is supposed to lie in the statistics that show that cocaine and heroin users in large part started out using marijuana. Since correlation (apparently) proves causation, marijuana use in teenagers and young adults therefore causes “hard drug” use later on.

Like most logical fallacies, when presented artfully, this can be a persuasive rhetorical device: it appears that the proponent of the theory is correct. Cocaine and Heroin users have a very high incidence of marijuana being their first illegal drug of choice. There must be a causal connection.

Let’s ignore for now the refutation that a higher percentage of cocaine and heroin addicts consumed alcohol than marijuana, and we all “know” that alcohol use does not cause cocaine or heroin addiction… (since many readers, like me, are occasional alcohol consumers who have never tried cocaine or heroin)

Let me ask you this: don’t you think the percentage of cocaine and heroin users that drank milk sometime in their lives (before use of the drug) is probably almost 100%?

Correlation does not prove causation. That’s just another logical fallacy brought to you by the Drug Czar.

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