14 DAY TRIAL // After having pumped laboratory mice full of high doses of all sorts of recreational drugs and also having looked at how much of each of these drugs guys and gals usually consume in one sitting, scientists in Germany made a rather startling discovery.
They found that, when compared to alcohol and tobacco, marijuana is safer, meaning that it is less deadly. What's more, it appears that, when it comes to how likely it is to kill people, alcohol trumps even the most potent of recreational drugs, heroin, ecstasy and methamphetamine included.
How the investigation played out
Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers who carried out this study explain that, as part of their work, they exposed laboratory mice to high doses of various drugs looking to determine how much of either of these substances it would take to kill them.
They then looked at how much of each of the drugs included in their investigation folks usually take on just one occasion. The goal was to determine the drugs' lethality based not on their properties alone but on how much people consume on average.
It's important to note that the study did not take into account the indirect consequences of substance use. Thus, aspects like deaths related to accidents caused by drugs, the psychological issues that come with drug abuse, and addiction potential were not taken into consideration, Medical Express informs.
Instead, the scientists were only interested in measuring the lethality of a single dose of each of the drugs selected for this research project. As mentioned, these single doses were established by looking at how much of either of these substances people usually take.
How marijuana is safer than alcohol and tobacco
The specialists behind this investigation argue that, at least when it comes to the lethality of a single dose, marijuana is the safest of the substances that folks occasionally turn to for recreational purposes, even alcohol and tobacco.
In fact, the researchers rated the substances they analyzed from the most to the least deadly as follows: alcohol, heroin, cocaine, tobacco, ecstasy and meth, with marijuana coming in last. That's right, alcohol proved the worst in this study.
“The results confirm that the risk of cannabis may have been overestimated in the past,” the scientists explain in their paper in the journal Scientific Reports. “In contrast, the risk of alcohol may have been commonly underestimated,” they add.
Interestingly enough, this study follows a report that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US released in early January and that says that, each year, about 2,200 people living in this country die of alcohol poisoning.