Alcohol Kills over 88,000 Americans Annually, yet Cannabis is Schedule 1?

In a story about the alarming rise in Emergency Room visits due to acute alcohol issues over the past 9 years, National Public Radio reports that nearly 88,129 deaths annually were caused by excessive drinking in the US between 2006 and 2010, quoting the Center for Disease Control's figures on this deadly scourge.

And if that's not enough, alcohol has been shown to raise the risk of seven (7) types of cancer, according to a study by Cancer Research UK, published in the journal Nature (those cancers include mouth, upper throat (pharynx), voice box (laryngeal), esophageal, breast, liver, and bowel cancer, in case you were wondering) AND cause damage to DNA.

According to the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving, "In 2016, 10,497 people died in drunk driving crashes – one every 50 minutes – and 290,000 were injured in drunk driving crashes.

There are probably dozens of similar statistics about alcohol's egregious effects, the weight of which beg the simple question: if alcohol is legal, why cannabis - on which a person cannot overdose - illegal under the DEA's Schedule 1?

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