The seal of the Drug Enforcement Administration is seen on a lectern before the start of a press conference at DEA Headquarters on June 26, 2013 in Arlington, Virginia. (Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images)

Even the DEA says nobody has ever died of a marijuana overdose

Cannabis connoisseurs have been saying for years that marijuana is a safer recreational substance than alcohol. Now they can use the DEA to back up their argument.

“No deaths from overdose of marijuana have been reported,” the DEA wrote in the 2017 resource guide titled Drugs of Abuse. The guide offers the lay of the land in terms of illicit drug consumption across America today. The fact that there are no reported deaths due to cannabis overdose means that marijuana is demonstrably safer than liquor, which causes approximately 6 deaths every day due to alcohol poisoning.

The guide also noted that the effects of cannabis included “merriment,” “happiness,” “enhanced sensory perception,” “increased appreciation of music, art and touch,” and “heightened imagination.”

Those notes make it all the more surprising that marijuana remains one of the most highly prohibited substances in the country. The federal government has slotted marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, meaning marijuana is classified as a drug that has “a high potential for abuse” and “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States” (to use the guide’s language). So even though marijuana has never caused a fatal overdose, it’s listed alongside dangerous substances like heroin.

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This story was first published on Civilized.Life