Those are interesting statistics. Especially considering everyone I know that smokes pot also smokes cigarettes, drinks, and uses various prescription and non-prescription drugs. I'm sure when they die each category will get a mark except for marijuana use... we can't have that.
We had an article in the local paper crying about a local "kid" who was a victim of marijuana laws - all he'd done was have a little pot in his posession. I went back through my collection of papers and found the original article dealing with him. First, the kid was 22 years old. Second, police were responding to an alarm at 2am and saw a car being driven slowly in an industrial area. The plates came back as being stolen, the driver decided to try and evade and crashed the car. The stolen car contained stolen items from several businesses AND the 22 year old kid-passenger was carrying 1+ ounces of weed packaged in one gram packets. Of course, the local writer left all that out and it became yet another "poor kid gets busted for weed" article.
Interesting in that everyone I know that smokes pot does NOT smoke tobacco, consume only small amounts of booze, and use very few prescription drugs (other than occasional antibiotics).
Nevertheless, we can walk through any major hospital and find dozens of folks with booze-induced liver failure and tobacco-induced lung cancer or emphesema. But we will not find a marijuana ward. No pot patients at ANY hospital I have worked in. What do you make of that?
Since it is impossible to overdose on pot, it wouldn't make sense to mark those. Now if you count lung cancer and traffic deaths, the stats get a little murky. Still, the fact is that nobody can overdose on pot.
We had an article in the local paper crying about a local "kid" who was a victim of marijuana laws - all he'd done was have a little pot in his posession. I went back through my collection of papers and found the original article dealing with him. First, the kid was 22 years old. Second, police were responding to an alarm at 2am and saw a car being driven slowly in an industrial area. The plates came back as being stolen, the driver decided to try and evade and crashed the car. The stolen car contained stolen items from several businesses AND the 22 year old kid-passenger was carrying 1+ ounces of weed packaged in one gram packets. Of course, the local writer left all that out and it became yet another "poor kid gets busted for weed" article.
So you have biased journalists. Arrest him for stealing the car and be done with the case.