But then there's no LD50 determined for cannabis. So how could one overdose on cannabis?
That said, we've come a long way from the era of Hearst, Anslinger, and the racist "degenerates" rhetoric.
Marijuana-related fatal car accidents surge in Washington state after legalization: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/10/marijuana-re...
You can go ahead and keep thinking weed is harmless, but many drugs have started out being promoted as "harmless" including heroin, which was promoted as a cough suppressant in the early 1900's. What about cigarettes? How much propaganda did you see touting them as "harmless" despite all the scientific research to the contrary? And what about the surge in cocaine use in the 1970's and 80's? People thought it was just a harmless drug people used on the weekends.
While I do believe there are many positive uses for marijuana, thinking its harmless is just being naive.
People are gonna make bad decisions regardless of drugs, it's not like you have a smoke and the first thought that crosses your mind is "DRIVE".
2015 NHTSA: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/pot/2015/02/11/federal-study-d...
This BBC/SpeedTV video from 2010 sums it up, if you have 5 minutes to judge for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzKjFiGFrcU
As always, YMMV.
There is moderate evidence of a statistical association between cannabis use and:
• Increased risk of overdose injuries, including respiratory distress, among pediatric populations in U.S. states where cannabis is legal (9-4b)
There is no or insufficient evidence to support or refute a statistical association between cannabis use and:
[...]
• Death due to cannabis overdose (9-4a)
http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2013/03/25/how-safe-is-mari...
I'm no scientist nor a baker so I don't know the details behind it, but as far as I know the THC needs something to bind to before it's digestible, usually a fat - probably why cannabutter is the most common way of getting it into edibles.
And that doesn't even account for the CBD which I have zero idea about with regards to edibles.
If a human were to die of cannabis inhalation or ingestion, it's not clear which of the hundreds of compounds in cannabis would be the one most responsible for the fatality. It's quite possible that it wouldn't be THC.
You would almost certainly vomit long before you hit that threshold.
If you also took an anticonvulsant and just straight-up downed raw plant material, I suppose it's possible... but at that point, we're stretching the meaning of "lethal dose".
Is it possible we could see an overdose at some point once physical volume becomes much less of a factor?
Unheated Marijuana doesn't have psychoactive effects. And like another poster said, the effects don't work through digestion without it binding to a fat. So just eating plain buds, even if they've been decarbed won't do much of anything.
Edit: Found a study [0] that references the 3g/kg figure. That LD50 is for pure THC, not pure cannabis.
"Lethal toxicity is reportedly rare with the THC LD50 = 3000 mg/kg in dogs.[2, 13] Both dogs that died in this study likely ingested significantly lower doses than the LD50 of THC; however, it is also possible that these dogs were more sensitive to THC or THC butter contains additional compounds that can be fatal in dogs."
[0] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1476-4431.2012....
It would likely kill 50% of the population it was dropped on :-D
From the full report:
"Accidental ingestion of cannabis by young children can result in respiratory failure and coma, as noted by several case reports (Amirav et al., 2011; Appelboam and Oades, 2006; Carstairs et al., 2011), and the consumption of cannabis edibles has been identified as a contributing factor in the accidental death of at least one adolescent (Hancock- Allen et al., 2015)." ... "among all calls to U.S. poison centers in involving single-substance exposures to cannabis, death was the outcome in two cases in 2012, no cases in 2013, and one case in 2014 (Mowry et al., 2013, 2014, 2015), although the reports do not indicate whether cannabis exposure was a contributing factor in these outcomes. Cannabis was not found to be the main cause of death in any of the fatal intoxications among drug addicts submitted for medico-legal autopsy and toxicological analysis in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, or Sweden in either 2007 or 2012 (Simonsen et al., 2011, 2015)." ... "In a study on unintentional pediatric cannabis exposure, Wang et al. (2016) described a case where hospital staff members were unable to resuscitate an unresponsive 11-month-old child who presented with tachycardia and metabolic acidosis and who tested positive for THC in a urine drug screen. The authors noted that any relationship between cannabis exposure and the patient’s symptoms or outcome was unclear. Although presented here for discussion, these case reports did not inform the committee’s conclusions on the association between cannabis use and overdose death.
By comparison with the minimal literature on cannabis-related overdose death in adults or children, several studies reported on potentially serious symptoms associated with cannabis exposure in pediatric populations. Le Garrec et al. (2014) reported that, over a 3.5-year period, seven children aged 11–33 months were admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit in Paris with accidental cannabis poisoning. All of the children had central nervous system symptoms, including drowsiness and coma, and three were intubated and placed on mechanical ventilation for less than 24 hours. Between 2010 and 2013, an Arizona poison control center received 49 calls related to unintentional medical marijuana ingestions among children aged 7 and younger (Lovecchio and Heise, 2015). Among the 39 records with complete information, the most commonly reported symptoms were lethargy (48 percent of cases), an inability to walk (53 percent), coma (10 percent), and vomiting (21 percent)."