Which is more dangerous, alcohol or marijuana?

This week's news brought us Governor Christie's tirade against the idea of legalizing marijuana in New Jersey. State Sen. Nicholas Scutari is going full steam ahead with a legalization bill which has a chance of passing with a new governor due in office in 8 months. In fact, while calling the idea of legalizing weed "beyond stupidity", Christie also pointed out he has been the only thing standing between New Jersey and legal marijuana for 7 years. Apparently he's the only one who knows a bad idea when he sees it?

Also this week we've had continuing coverage of the Pedro Abad trial. That's the 'wrong way' cop charged with the drunk driving deaths of his friends after leaving a strip club in Staten Island and driving 73 mph head on into a tractor trailer. He's been quoting lots of bible verses while refusing to testify. In fact the defense rested without calling a single witness, but trying to kick up dust clouds of doubt for the jurors which I think no one is buying.

While the governor talks about marijuana being a gateway drug and talks about tax revenue from weed being 'blood money', he seems to have no problem raking in tax money from alcohol. So which is really more dangerous?

Alcohol has been linked to 88,000 deaths per year according to the CDC. Among those numbers, deaths from drunk driving and disease. You can also die of an alcohol overdose (alcohol poisoning) simply by drinking too much too fast. Ruben Baler, a scientist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse says you cannot fatally overdose on marijuana.

Of course there are other ways to die. Marijuana use while driving can be dangerous, but it doesn't bring about the high number of road fatalities that alcohol does. Can it bring about adverse health effects? The body of research is dwarfed in comparison to what we know about alcohol, so the jury might still be out. Then there's the possibility of it being a gateway drug to hard drugs like heroin. But studies have shown cigarette use is actually a better predictor of future hard drug use than marijuana, yet we sell it legally, tax it, and watch 440,000 people die from it in the U.S. every year. Gotta love the hypocrisy.