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Comment by pchivers | Hacker News Reader

>If heroin really is "so good," why does it have such a tiny share of the illegal drug market? Marijuana is more than 45 times as popular.

One possible reason is that people are squeamish about needles and uncomfortable consuming drugs intravenously.

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I am not a fan of marijuana (or any street drug) but it is incredibly hard to mess it up. It has a fantastic 'therapeutic index' - a big fat window between the dosages where it starts having useful effects and those where it starts potentially harming you.

(anecdotally I would wonder about impact on lifestyle, but killing yourself with pot would be pretty tough, and expensive)

This is a big contrast from serious downers which put the happy zone right next to the off switch, and build up tolerance...

"but killing yourself with pot would be pretty tough, and expensive"

It seems to be impossible to actually overdose from the THC contained in marijuana. No one has actually managed to kill a large mammal with THC, but they have managed to kill small rodents.

Extrapolating up it seems that you might be able to obtain a lethal dose of THC by consuming somewhere between 1/3 of your body weight and 1500 lbs of marijuana (all at once).

> killing yourself with pot would be pretty tough, and expensive

As far as I know there's not a single death directly caused by the substance yet.

Other than those inconvenient people who have died as a direct result of the errors of drivers under the influence of the substance, of course.

To be more specific I was talking about dying from pot itself, not from extended effects.

Seeing as you can totally smoke heroine, I think it has less to do with the needles and more to do with the fact that it is one of the most addictive substances in the world and people regularly die from overdose.

Also, nearly all "normal" tasks can be done stoned on pot but you can hardly talk when you're on heroine.

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