Researchers: Alcohol Health Risks Underestimated, Marijuana Relatively Safe

schwit1 writes Compared to other recreational drugs — including alcohol — marijuana may be even safer than previously thought. And researchers may be systematically underestimating risks associated with alcohol use. They found that at the level of individual use, alcohol was the deadliest substance (abstract), followed by heroin and cocaine.

Comments

FFS

[fyngyrz]

This is only news to those who have had their head in the ground, listening to fox news and government shills.

Re:FFS

[sysrammer]

Heroin isn't all that bad as long as it's medical quality and administered professionally.

I imagine the same thing can be said for alcohol.

sr

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy"

Re:FFS

[ganjadude]

clearly. The news has been overwhelming for decades now the studies have been done (and buried) by the government since at least 76.

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

For every one of these research papers, there is another one citing the dangers of the drug. The same journal has a study showing pot-smoking teens are 60% less likely to finish high school than ones who don't. You can't cherry pick your science by headlines. The proper argument for legalizing should be freedom, not safety.

Re:FFS

[ganjadude]

why go back to reagan??? obama promised to leave states alone, and not 2 months into office his people are busting innocent people who he promised (when needing votes) to leave alone.

Re:FFS

[Dutchmaan]

There's a difference between physical danger and social effects.

Re:FFS

[0123456789]

Causation is hard to identify in your example though: does smoking pot encourage teens to drop out; or are the teens that are on track to drop out, more likely to smoke pot?

Re:FFS

[mwehle]

There's a difference between physical danger and social effects.

Glad to see someone making this point. The article cited is about the relative lethal dose of various drugs. Discussion of the risks/benefits of marijuana use do not generally include a debate around the risk that someone will smoke to the point of death, unlike discussion of campus alcohol consumption, which must take into account frat and other alcohol poisoning deaths. Actual deaths, though, are not the most significant social effect of widespread alcohol or pot consumption.

Re:FFS

[ShanghaiBill]

There's a difference between physical danger and social effects.

It is important to note that this study ONLY looks at the physical danger of the drug itself. I don't think it surprises even the most ardent opponent of weed that people very, very rarely die from THC overdose. That is NOT the reason they oppose it. The only meaningful comparison is when you include the "social effects", such as deaths from intoxicated driving, and also the economic cost of alcoholism, apathetic potheads, etc. But the argument that "weed is not as bad as alcohol" really isn't a convincing argument for legalization. Instead you need to compare the costs and benefits of legalized dope, with the costs and benefits of dope prohibition. I think that Colorado and Washington make a pretty clear case for legalization.

Re:FFS

[Mr D from 63]

Causation is hard to identify in your example though: does smoking pot encourage teens to drop out;

The answer is absolutely yes, it can cause some kids to drop out of school.

I have witnessed my best friend go from a straight A student throughout high school to dropping out the last half of his senior year so he could smoke pot. This set him back a long way, and he had to go back and get a GED 3 years later. It was a clear case of pot's impact on this particular kid, it didn't have the same impact on my or other close friends who all started about that time.

Re:FFS

[Bender Unit 22]

I think the anti-drug warriors are more interested in the money that are to be made from "fighting" drugs and locking people up.

Re:FFS

[gweihir]

Indeed. There are quite a few older heroin addicts that are productive member of society. They tend to have money and education, as the unregulated market is the main risk. These results just show that the "War on Drugs" is not something rational and does untold harm.

Re:FFS

[gweihir]

Actually, no. At the levels needed to get the desired effect, Alcohol is far more dangerous than Heroin.

Re:FFS

[camg188]

Every single person that I know that drinks alcohol drank milk first.

Milk. Not even once.

Re:FFS

[gatfirls]

Really, it's what happens when you politicize a topic. All of the facts fly out the window and it becomes special interest and ideology.

It's the epitome of Colbert's 'truthiness' about the way he feels in his gut about the facts.

Re:FFS

[serviscope_minor]

And they breathe air.

You know who else who breathed air? Hitler. That's who.

Re:FFS

[Mr D from 63]

It was his choice to smoke pot, which led to his skipping school. It makes sense that it affects different people differently, if you want to assume otherwise go ahead. Compared to those who have accidents, "a considerably larger number of people" who drive drunk arrive at their destination with no incident. That would be foolish logic to apply.

My friend knows very well it was smoking pot, he admits it freely and regrets it. It is quite clear in this situation that if he didn't start smoking he would not have dropped out.

Re: FFS

[Shakrai]

And the Supreme Court says that the Congressional power to regulate interstate commerce extends even to plants that you grow for personal use with no intention of resale.

I don't really like or agree with those rulings but they are the law of the land, for better or worse....

Re:FFS

[sfcat]

I don't think so. In university some pharmacy or chemistry guys could scrounge pure ethanol. (98 or 99%.) Screwdrives with that were nasty.

But nobody became addicted to that after 1 or 2 dozes, have they? Heroin, on the other hand, is so addictive, a decent percentage of humans get hooked after only a few dozes.

If that was really the case then people who were given morphine drips in hospitals would have high rates of addiction after leaving the hospital. But this doesn't happen. People who get addicted to Opioids either are in constant, on-going pain (due to injury or other reason) or are purely recreational users who are likely responding to external stresses. Basically, the entire model of addiction you are using is wrong and the numbers on addiction bear this out quite clearly. And before you tell me about "soldier's sickness" after the Civil war, remember that most of those soldiers had on-going, serious pain management issues (due to missing limbs and poor quality surgery at the time). This is why our "war on drugs" has been such a monumental failure, our basic model of addiction is wrong and leads you to believe non-sense (like your post). Heroin is certainly addictive but addiction is a response to stress and pain, not a moral failing or a bio-chemical crutch. A better model is provided by the Rat Park research. Policy using this model as a basis will be much more effective if for no other reason than its a far more accurate model of how humans behave than the practically medieval way we deal with addiction right now.

Re:FFS

[MillionthMonkey]

The same journal has a study showing pot-smoking teens are 60% less likely to finish high school than ones who don't.

I would suspect alcohol also has an undesirable effect on high school graduation rates.

Re:FFS

[Sperbels]

It's not a recent trend. It's been the biggest argument for decades. Alcohol kills people. Alcohol turns regular people into assholes. Weed? Waaaaay more benign.

Re:FFS

[rahvin112]

Instead you need to compare the costs and benefits of legalized dope

The only comparison that should be made is, does the guy smoking/drinking "X" impede on your personal rights. If the answer is no there shouldn't even be a law on the subject. Alcohol and drug prohibition do not work because they are trying to protect people from themselves. Prohibition actually makes the problem far worse by not only increasing the desire to do them, but putting crime networks behind the highly lucrative trade and sale.

Prohibition has failed twice now, it doesn't work and you'd do well to acknowledge that fact. You'd also do well to get off the Nanny state bandwagon.

Re:FFS

[AK Marc]

That's why "pure" heroine and professional administration eliminate OD. A hardened user that makes up his usual dose, and it's "borrowed" by a new user is how so many new users OD. That and the users that are used to one cheap line from one dealer, who switch to a more pure one, and OD from that. OD is caused by the illegality of it. Alcohol OD is caused by it being a poison. A touch of arsenic isn't deadly, nor is a touch of rat poison. But you don't want to use them regularly to unconsciousness, as so many do with alcohol.

Re:FFS

[enzo1]

Your arguments are invalid. You are incorrectly equating heroin to morphine. Heroin is both a stronger opioid and more short-acting, making it more addictive. Morphine and other opioids used for chronic medical conditions are not addictive in the same sense because the brain does not receive a pharmacologically intense pleasure signal, which is the basis of addiction. (They do cause physical dependence, which results effectively in addiction.)

Re:FFS

[angel'o'sphere]

One of the most addictive drugs is nicotine, hence tobacco.

Most addictions come from 'abuse' or more precisely continued mindless usage. Heroine itself is not particular addictive. That you get addicted from it after a 'few dozen' usages is a myth.

Being addicted is mainly a psychological problem, not really connected to the substance(s) you use.

Re: FFS

[Shakrai]

What actually is the "law of the land" is on pretty shaky ground, constitutionally.

Not really. Congress and the Executive never disputed Marbury v. Madison, therefore it is the de facto law of the land. I find it highly unlikely that either branch of Government is going to contest it now, 200 years after the fact. Congress would be best equipped to do so, since they exercise a lot of power over the structure of the judiciary (not to mention their budget), but do you honestly see any appetite in today's political climate to challenge the concept of judicial review? More to the point, do you really think it's a good idea?

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think so. In university some pharmacy or chemistry guys could scrounge pure ethanol. (98 or 99%.) Screwdrives with that were nasty.

But nobody became addicted to that after 1 or 2 dozes, have they? Heroin, on the other hand, is so addictive, a decent percentage of humans get hooked after only a few dozes.

Yep, any human who only has a few dozes, immediately becomes addicted to sleeping for the rest of their lives.

Re:FFS

[Sardaukar86]

It takes tens of pounds of cannabis to obtain enough THC to overdose.

Just curious, can you provide a cite for that? I've only ever heard that LD50 has never actually been established for THC even in lab conditions, only estimated.

According to the DEA in 1988 in docket 86-22;

A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response

Admittedly that's not a terribly recent report so I was wondering if you knew of a more recent study.

Re:FFS

[znrt]

bullshit.

Re:FFS

[Firethorn]

No link, but I heard on NPR that back during the Korean/Vietnam war absolutely embarrassing numbers of troops were addicted to heroin.

The military tried an experiment- they dried them out and had them ride out the physical addiction over there in special centers BEFORE shipping them back to the states.

Their success, measured by how many soldiers(and ex-soldiers) fell back into addiction, was all out of line of the thinking of the time.

They came to the conclusion that a large part of the addiction must have been environmental - the sharp change between the war zone and the USA resulted in the vast majority of them NOT seeking out heroin.

Which is why many treatment centers talk about changing the environment to beat addiction.

By the way, I think the study isn't all that great - it only looks at the chance of death, not other possible long and short term negative effects from consumption. It's relatively easy to kill yourself by overdosing on Heroin, but from what I've read, if you can successfully ride that line(not difficult for a doctor), you can take it pretty much for life without other negative effects. You're addicted, but in about the same way a diabetic is addicted to insulin.

Re:FFS

[theshowmecanuck]

A significantly higher proportion of teens who smoke pot will go on to develop schizophrenia than those who don't. It is not a benign drug. You wouldn't get high if it was.

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Heroin is the same chemical formula as diamorphine which is widely administered intravenously in hospitals for severe pain management. There might be contamination in heroin sold on streets which could change its properties but other than that there is no reason to consider one more stronger than another.

Re:FFS

[dclydew]

Later studies (2013) debunked the older studies (2011 and before) that marijuana causes schizophrenia in teens. A Harvard study which included pot smokers and their families (both with and without psychotic illness). The data indicates that if you're genetically predisposed to psychotic illness, you're likely to have psychotic illness and marijuana may have an effect on onset age. If you're not genetically predisposed to psychotic illness, then you're not likely to have a psychotic illness, even if you're a teenage stoner. It appears that young people with genetic predisposition to psychotic illness may seek out self-medication with marijuana, but the numbers show a very strong correlation with family traits and no statistically significant correlation with Marijuana use.

http://www.schres-journal.com/...

That's not to say that Marijuana is completely without risks, especially in adolescents with a predisposition to genetic or psychological issues. However, most recent studies do seem to indicate that without the predisposition, 'harm' is relatively limited. In adults, most recent studies indicate no long term effects at all.

Its a shame that the government shut down research on marijuana for so many decades. Who knows how many people could have been helped if doctors had accurate information.

Re: FFS

[Mr D from 63]

Your friend could be lying. .

LYING? I was with him the whole time, there is nothing to lie about, a blind man could see what was happening. You are lying to yourself if you have to try that hard to take blame off pot.

Unbelievable! You have no clue about the situation, and you accuse him of lying because you don't like the association. That says a lot about you. Good day.

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Please account for the fact that the United Kingdom frequently prescribes diamorphine (heroin) in place of morphine. This is one of the "other opioids" being used for chronic medical conditions that you've mentioned, yet pain patients in the UK aren't facing significantly different addiction rates than those of other Western countries.

Also, having in the past been addicted to various opioids for a number of years, morphine delivers a "pharmacologically intense pleasure signal" just fine. It may not have the rush of heroin, but the enduring high is essentially the same, given that heroin is primarily and rapidly metabolized into morphine, anyhow.

I'll leave you with this Wikipedia quote: "However, this perception is not supported by the results of clinical studies comparing the physiological and subjective effects of injected heroin and morphine in individuals formerly addicted to opioids; these subjects showed no preference for one drug over the other. Equipotent injected doses had comparable action courses, with no difference in subjects' self-rated feelings of euphoria, ambition, nervousness, relaxation, drowsiness, or sleepiness."

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

You are incorrectly equating heroin to morphine.

It's the same. (It's in the Esters of morphine category.)

Heroin is both a stronger opioid and more short-acting, making it more addictive.

No, it's basically identical. You're drawing false distinctions between two different names for the same thing. Hospitals use diamorphine all the time.

Stupid Graphic

[Anonymous Coward]

This headline is based on a comparison of a recreational dose versus a lethal dose, not a study of long term health effects.

Re:Stupid Graphic

[TheReaperD]

True, but the number of deaths for doing something stupid while on LSD is another matter. With it, and other substances, you need to take into account the actions people take while their behavior is modified. It does make it a complete mess to try and scientifically track the adverse effects of these substances.

At this point, I see making these substances illegal, all of them, is causing more problems than they solve. It's time to make drugs legal and create a (sub)-Department of Harmful Recreation Substances to track quality, adverse reactions and to make sure the public is properly informed on the actual effects of all these substances. It would save an incredible amount of money, $225 billion in anti-drug enforcement in the U.S. alone and create new revenue to deal with the problems caused by people being stupid. People try to say that drugs would be even more available but, you can go less than a mile in almost every town in the U.S. and purchase any drug you wish. Criminalizing it is not keeping it off the street and it never will. It would save lives by minimizing health issues from inconsistent dosing, poor to no quality control and lack of reliable information of these substances to say nothing of the current arms race between the new designer drugs that have never been tested and the DEA.

The facts are irrelevant!

[fustakrakich]

We've known this for many years. It doesn't matter in a dogmatic political system that profits from human suffering.

Not what it sounds like

[pla]

FWIW, TFA talks about the therapeutic index (LD50 vs effective dose) of these drugs, not their long-term effects.

So no, this doesn't add more information to the "alcohol is good for you this week / alcohol is bad for you next week" debate. Just saying that we typically drink a significant fraction of the amount it would take to kill us.

Re:Not what it sounds like

[pla]

...While no one has ever said "hold my beer and watch this!"

Re:I'll skip both.

[sysrammer]

I'll call your skip and raise a toast.

Ratio..?

[ichthus]

Ratio between toxic dose and typical human intake? That's their scale. Pretty meaningless. Yeah, put water on that scale, and I'd bet it would be somewhere down around heroin's risk.

Re:Ratio..?

[gurps_npc]

That's simply not true.

But there are quite a few substances people think are 'harmless' that if you consume more than the normal dose you can kill yourself.

Chief on the list is salt substitute. Many people buy the 'low sodium salt substitute" Potassium Chloride to replace table salt Sodium Chloride. But it is the exact same substance used by several states to execute death penalty cases.

Nut meg is also up there, along with our friend Vitamin A

All three of those substances are typically sold to consumers in containers that, if used all at once, can kill you.

Re:Ratio..?

[Headw1nd]

No, he's right. The LD50 dose for water is somewhere around 6-10L in a sitting. With an average "dose" of maybe .5-1L, this would put it in the same range as alcohol. Of course, it is incredibly difficult to actually achieve that, since the quantity consumed is so large, which incidentally is the exact problem with comparing alcohol and heroin on this basis. Consuming a lethal dose of alcohol is generally a time consuming process, injecting a lethal dose of heroin is no more complicated than injecting a regular dose.

Whatever

[irrational_design]

Alcohol is good for your health! Alcohol is bad for your health! Smoking is good for your health (says the 1940s doctor)! Smoking is bad for your health! Marijuana is bad for your health! Marijuana is good for your health! The only guarantee is that next year what is good will be bad and what is bad will be good.

Re:Whatever

[BlackPignouf]

Wait, what?
When was alcohol considered really good for your health?
When was marijuana considered really bad for your health?
The worst side effects for marijuana have always been those linked to prohibition :
* landing in jail
* supporting mafia

As far as marijuana being possibly linked to mental illness, I think it's more of a correlation than causation.
The same goes for those studies about heavy marijuana use at a young age. If you can smoke pot all day long at 14, I think you're life isn't screwed solely because of weed.

Re:What that tells me

[fustakrakich]

US soldiers are dying in the ongoing and perpetual Afghan Opium War to bring the finest kind to Russia/Europe/America. As the graph shows they were entirely successful. Here Bush's *Mission* was definitely accomplished, in spades! I don't know whether prohibition or legalization leads to more profit in these times. Prohibition definitely *creates jobs*. So the incentive to abolish it remains diminished.

Re:I'll skip both.

[invictusvoyd]

pass me that joint first

Useless comparison

[wbr1]

I drink.. I used to smoke, and I used to smoke marijuana, but I wont bore you with anecdotal personal stories. TFA mainly looks at the ratio of LD50 compared to the effective dose. For alcohol, the LD50 is close to the dose many consume. Closer than the LD50 of THC is to the used dosage. By that measure, LSD is safer than asprin because the ration there is so far apart.

Yes alcohol has long term health effects, so does any other substance. Eating has long term health effects. The real measurements are immediate risk, long term risk, and gain from consumption.

This addresses none of those in a useful fashion.

Re:title should be: "chance to overdose"

[Rockoon]

How is this informative? Nicotine isnt exactly hard to overdose on.

Those that modded this guy informative are partisan assholes.

dumbfucks

Protip

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Do whatever you enjoy in life. Drink, smoke, eat meat, take drugs. Don't listen to the alarmists, everything is bad for you. Instead, learn to enjoy in moderation, at the right moments.

Just don't let it become a habit. There is no savor in habits, only self contempt and other bad things, like addiction.

Re:Protip

[msobkow]

Somebody beat me to it. :)

No matter what you do in life, you are going to die. There is no escaping that.

So live a life of wonder, mystery, and enjoyment, rather than spending it fretting about exactly what might be the thing that kills you. Eat a bacon sandwich. Put cream in your coffee. Have a steak once in a while. Have a doughnut once a month. And by all means, have a glass of wine with your meal and spark a bowl of cannabis afterwards.

Being a depressed couch potato is safe, after all

[elcano]

'Even Casual Marijuana Use Harms Young Brain, Study Finds' http://www.elementsbehavioralh... Marijuana might not be dangerous in a fully developed brain, but it causes damage to a young one. Sure, many used it years ago and nobody became a depressed looser... Or, did they?

The benefit of Science

[mcrbids]

There is a tremendous amount of ignorance and stupidity the world over. People get ideas from random sources, make their choices, and are very prone to making the mistake of believing everything they think. So we have people who *still* swear by Laetrile as a cure for cancer, or Scientology as a cure for arthritis caused by grumpy souls stuck in their elbows.

However, science offers a way out of the maze: the idea that ideas are only as valuable as they can be *validated* by peer review and experimentation. Validating ideas is painful, costly, and time consuming, so it takes *time* to find all the stupids and work them out, one by one. Combine that with the often significant economic interests in the ideas being cross-checked, and you can see it often takes even more time and expense to get the word out.

The change of tune that you point out is perhaps the single biggest strength of science, not some evidence of *ahem* irrational design.

Alcohol is better for you than water

[viperidaenz]

Woman drinks 30 - 40 glasses of water and dies. * http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

You're 'supposed' to drink 8 glasses a day. A 5x increase of water intake can lead to death.

Women are 'supposed' to limit themselves to 2 standard drinks per day. Drinking 10 standard drinks does not result in death.

Is it not true?

[gatfirls]

Pointing out that MJ is relatively safe (from accidental overdose) after decades of propaganda showing it to be a "dangerous" drug and comparing it to other "dangerous" drugs is a pretty important message.

Especially when you drop alcohol underneath the really nasty stuff.

It's making a really valid point. You put alcohol abuse up against MJ and the others for long term health affects you will probably see smoking climb the chart and fight alcohol for top run while MJ stays the same.