Alcohol, cigarettes are much more dangerous than pot

Michael Gimbel is remarkably uninformed about medical marijuana and drugs generally, in spite of his former role as drug czar in Baltimore County.
Alcohol and tobacco are the drugs of death and widespread harm for Americans and very large profits for big American corporations, lawyers, and the prison industry and unions.
There is not a single recorded case of a death due to marijuana overdose, but tens, even hundreds of thousands of Americans die annually due to the legal drugs whose makers profit from so handsomely and then use those profits to keep safer and cheaper alternatives like marijuana off the market. All those profits buy a lot of legislators, drug czars, prisons and power to keep the status quo money machine flowing.
Sure, the present circumstances lead some small operators to game the system with medical marijuana, but it is mostly a benign and harmless chemical compared to what the system makes legal. A large part of the story the media does not tell very well flows out of the abuse of power for economic purposes by those who run the present system.
If Marijuana, alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs were all controlled to the same degree, by similar rules, America and its people would be a vastly healthier, safer and less corrupt country.