There are numerous research studies out there looking at the damage both alcohol and cannabis are able to inflict on the body. They all tend to show the same thing: that alcohol has the most potential for abuse and damage. It has led to a lot of pro-cannabis figures and politicians stating that alcohol is more dangerous than cannabis - even President Barack Obama has state he believes it to be so.

The thing is though, most of this research has focused on the actual literal harm inflicted, not the comparative risk between these two substances. For the first time (that we know of), research has been published conducting an actual comparative risk assessment between cannabis and alcohol, as well as tobacco and a few other illicit substances. What did they find? That using alcohol is roughly 114 more dangerous than marijuana.

To assess the risk, they compared the lethal dose of each substance to the amount typically used by the average person. Not only was marijuana found to have the lowest mortality risk of all substances tested, the margin between it and everything else was so high it was the only substance to be classed as low risk, with everything else being “medium” or “high”.

The researchers were so sure of their findings, and the minimal risk cannabis poses to us all, that they recommended full regulated legalisation across the board! It is a very significant thing to state within a research paper, and testament to negligible risks of using cannabis.

For quite a time, anti-cannabis authorities have been scrambling to find evidence that cannabis is extremely harmful compared to other substances. They have just been blown out of the water.