aid population. Therefore, the safety margin of morphine is 9. The safety margin of alcohol, a legal drug, is 10; the safety margin of nicotine is 60. Comparatively, the safety margin of cannabis is 2600; it requires 1,300 marijuana cigarettes, in the span of approximately five minutes, to produce a lethal dosage (Fish 413). Incredibly, while there are numerous deaths each year from overdoses of alcohol, there has never been a death resulting from overdose of cannabis. David Baggins says on page 72 of Drug Hate and the Corruption of American Justice , “…there are zero fatalities in medical history from marijuana use. This compares to nearly a half million deaths each year from tobacco and tens of thousands of deaths each year from alcohol, the nations number one and two drugs in terms of health consequence…The health risk of marijuana is predominantly that almost half a million Americans each year are drawn into the criminal justice system through the prohibition of this drug.” The most controversial, and at this point in time plausible, argument for the partial decriminalization of marijuana is the potential medicinal value of marijuana. Marijuana use has been cited as a cure or treatment for several afflictions. For example, when a person suffers from glaucoma, fluid pressure builds in the eye until it causes damage to the optic nerve. Marijuana use causes a drop in intraocular pressure for glaucoma sufferers which usually lasts several hours. Marijuana use also has been praised for lessening pain, cramps, and nausea among cancer and AIDS patients, as well as stimulating their appetites, which are usually destroyed by chemotherapy and AIDS medication (Fish 422). Fish compares the use of marijuana and the use of the drug ondansetron on page 422 of How to Legalize Drugs. He explains that they both have comparable success rates in curing the nausea and vomiting of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. The benef...
