Here’s an interesting list I found that puts the dangers of marijuana in perspective. The sources of these statistics are reports ranging from 2003-2006 from the American Medical Association, National Center for Health Statistics, and US Centers for Disease Control:

Annual Causes of Death in the United States:

• Tobacco: 435,000
• Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity: 365,000
• Alcohol: 85,000
• Microbial Agents: 75,000
• Toxic Agents: 55,000
• Motor Vehicle Crashes: 26,374
• Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs: 32,000
• Suicide: 30,622
• Incidents Involving Firearms: 29,000
• Homicide: 20,308
• Sexual Behaviors: 20,000
• All Illicit Drug Use, Direct and Indirect: 17,000
• Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs such as Aspirin: 7,600
• MARIJUANA: 0

This information could be used to make a case for outlawing couch potatoes who sit around watching porn, smoking cigarettes and eating Big Macs under the influence of aspirin. But, um, as a deterrent against smoking pot it didn’t exactly scare the pants off me. They’ll have to try harder.