Drug overdose deaths rose for the eleventh straight year in America, fueled by legal prescriptions for OxyContin and Valium. Medical cannabis, meanwhile, continued its 10,000 year-long streak of not killing anyone by overdose.

There is no physical way to overdose on smoked or ingested cannabis, making it one of the safest, most non-toxic painkillers, sleeping aids, and stress relievers on the planet. It’s also a Schedule One narcotic that the U.S. government says has no medical use and a high potential for abuse.

Drugs that the U.S. government considers safer – like OxyContin, Vicodin and Valium – caused about 60 percent of the 38,329 drug overdose deaths nationwide in 2010, the CDC reports. “Anti-anxiety drugs including Valium were among common causes of medication-related deaths, involved in almost 30 percent of them. Among the medication-related deaths, 17 percent were suicides.”

Legal drugs deemed safe by the FDA killed more people than illegal heroin and cocaine overdoses combined, reports state. Those numbers promise to increase when statistics for 2011 and 2012 come out.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition speaker Nate Bradley – an ex-cop from Sacramento, CA. – says the figures add up.

“I saw so many people die from pills,” he said. “My first autopsy was a Vicodin overdose – the accidental Vicodin overdose of a 38 year-old woman. And I sat there and watched them take apart her body, because she accidentally had too much.”



News Hawk- TruthSeekr420 420 MAGAZINE
Source: sfgate.com
Author: David Downs
Contact: Contacts at San Francisco Chronicle - SFGate
Website: Smell the Truth » Prescription Drug Overdoses Killed 23,000 Americans in 2010; Cannabis – 0