The Women’s Christian Temperance
Union (WCTU) got it right! Even though cannabis was available at every corner
drug store and was as easily obtainable as alcohol, they knew alcohol was more
dangerous than cannabis.

The WCTA described their mission as
combating “the destructive power of alcohol and the problems it was causing
their families and society.” Their
solution, alcohol prohibition, was dead wrong, but their ranking of alcohol as
the most dangerous drug was common sense, as its horrors could be seen all
around them—horrors that can still be seen everywhere to this day.

Unfortunately, the common sense of
the WCTU when it comes to alcohol has been in short supply for the last 75
years. Fortunately, an international team of academic and scientific researchers
from Canada and Germany have confirmed the WCTU’s warnings on the unmitigated
dangers of alcohol, and along the way confirmed the overall safety of cannabis.

A January 2015 study entitled Comparative risk assessment of alcohol,
tobacco, cannabis and other illicit drugs using the margin of exposure approach, published in the online journal Scientific Reports,
a subsidiary of Nature, presented research which “validates
epidemiological and social science-based drug ranking approaches especially in
regard to the positions of alcohol and tobacco (high risk) and cannabis (low
risk).”

The study examined the relative
dangers of alcohol, heroin, cocaine, tobacco, ecstasy, meth and cannabis and
then categorized them in terms of harm from the highest to the lowest. Alcohol
was at the top of the list–144 times more dangerous than cannabis, which was at
the bottom of the list.

Although alcohol was at the top of
the list, heroin, cocaine and tobacco were not far behind, all firmly in the
high risk category. Ecstasy and meth were not much further behind, barely
edging out of the high risk category into the high end of the medium risk
category. Only cannabis made it solidly into the low risk category, so low that
it is in the lower end of the low zone.

A
similar study published in 2004 entitled Comparison of acute lethal toxicity
of commonly abused psychoactive substances reported similar findings with alcohol the most dangerous
and cannabis the least dangerous.

Researchers usually fear to make bold
conclusions on the irrationality of cannabis prohibition in their research
papers for fear of losing government research grants and the potential stigma
with academic colleagues and administrators wondering if the researchers might
be midnight tokers.

Not
Dirk W.
Lachenmeier and Jürgen Rehm, the study’s authors. In no uncertain terms they conclude that their reported “drug
rankings can therefore be useful to inform policy makers and the public about
the relative importance of licit drugs (including prescription drugs) and
illicit drugs for various types of harm.”

But
they don’t stop there. Using a minimum of the weasel words so often used by cannabis
researchers to placate their government funders, the authors concluded that cannabis
is so safe that communities should shift “risk management prioritization
towards alcohol and tobacco rather than illicit drugs” and in relation specifically
to cannabis, it would be best to follow “a strict legal regulatory approach
rather than the current prohibition approach.”

Their
call to realign “risk management prioritization towards alcohol and tobacco”
shifts the entire paradigm. The authors didn’t specifically suggest it, but policymakers
would do well to enact laws designed to discourage alcohol consumption in the
same way they have enacted laws to discourage tobacco consumption.

Restricting alcohol consumption and
ending cannabis prohibition is based in science, folks. It is science that
gives us modern medicine, puts food on our tables, starts our cars and flushes
our toilets. Those who deny the scientific basis for the safety of cannabis,
whether its use is for medical or recreational purposes, are in the same
lunatic league as those who deny the scientific basis for man caused climate
change and evolution.