Last updated : December 23, 2024
You’ve probably heard the claim, “marijuana hasn’t caused any deaths.” If you look at the statistics with one eye closed and squint with the other, you can almost believe it. Almost.
Smart folks prefer to approach life with both eyes open, and when you look at the data that way, you see weed has, indeed, killed.
Ganja has played a major role in deaths by:
- heart attack
- suicide
- traffic accidents
- industrial accidents
- homicide
…and even accidental overdose, when combined with alcohol or other drugs. Check it out.
Blame game?
The recent deaths of two German men in their twenties were attributed directly to marijuana use. A twenty-three-year-old man died when marijuana—long known to double heart rate while decreasing the blood’s ability to carry oxygen—caused “fatal cardiac complications” from a previously undiagnosed heart condition. Doctors felt the second death, a man who died at age twenty-eight, was related to the patient’s toking combined with history of alcohol and drug abuse. Ignorning the connections is like saying a bullet had nothing to do with the death of a gun shot victim—”it was only blood loss,” right?
Sound like rare and extenuating circumstances? If you think so, you may want to peruse the Mayo Clinic’s list of side effects and warnings for cannabis use. Because in addition to fatally firing cardiovascular problems, pot has been known to increase your risk for COPD, lung cancer, and a compromised (read: weakened) immune system. Any or all of which can prove deadly.
Mind games
Pot messes with your mind, a fact that’s not debatable. Even proponents are forced to admit marijuana use can increase your risks for depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts. Weed can lead you to hurt yourself and/or others. Consider these cases:
- A 47-year-old Denver man eats candy laced with marijuana—purchased at a licensed shop in Denver. Before you know it, he’s hallucinating and scaring the kids. Wait, it gets worse. While his wife is talking to 911, he grabs a gun from the safe and shoots her dead.
- A 19-year-old college student eats a legally purchased marijuana-laced cookie. Thirty minutes later, he’s shaking, screaming, breaking up hotel furniture. Finally, he runs out to the balcony and jumps over the fourth-floor railing. According to his autopsy, marijuana was a “significant contributing factor” to his death.
- A Philadelphia crane operator high on pot is operating an excavator when the remains of the building he’s working on collapse on top of a Salvation Army thrift store, killing 6 and injuring 13.
Now, in case you’re tempted to say pot didn’t actually cause those deaths, we’d just like to point out the authorities in each of these cases considered ganja a significant “contributing factor.” What does that mean? It means if you take the weed out of any of these equations, a number of people would still be alive—simple cause and effect, with the emphasis on cause.
High Traffic
Did you know using marijuana more than doubles your risk of having a traffic accident? Combine pot with booze—and plenty of people do—that risk increases 24 times. And fatal crashes where weed played a significant role? Those have already tripled. Cases in point:
- In Oklahoma a man already high on pot—and carrying more—drove directly into oncoming traffic, slamming into another car and killing its driver.
- A Bakersfield boat operator decided to combine alcohol and pot with fun on the water. Instead, he wound up ramming another boat, killing an expectant father, and earning a conviction for second-degree murder.
- A pilot high on marijuana crashed his plane in Canada’s northwestern territories, killing himself and a friend and injuring a number of others. Because weed had dulled his performance and decision-making ability, he was flying low, on visual, in conditions that called for more altitude and flying by instruments.
Bottom line, weed does kill. And it’s likely to kill more people than it already has, may in fact, already be doing so. We simply don’t know, because research into the psychological and physiological side effects of edible pot is still in its infancy. According to the National Center on Drug Abuse, the same can be said of research on the relationship between marijuana and lung cancer. Marijuana is causing deaths and it doesn’t have to come from organ failure to count in the totals.
