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Hmm, they state this in "Injury and Death": > In states where cannabis use is legal, there is increased risk of unintentional cannabis overdose injuries among

Hmm, they state this in "Injury and Death": > In states where cannabis use is legal, there is increased risk of unintentional cannabis overdose injuries among children. But then there's no LD50 determined for cannabis. So how could one overdose on cannabis?

Beltiras 10y ago
Read a funny statement in a study the other day. The lethal dose of cannabis for dogs is 3g/kg. Don't know if it translates to humans but if the order of magnitude is about the same then it takes on the order of 300 grams ingested to kill a human.
- woliveirajr 10y ago
  I bet that ingested paper or plastic have a lower FD50 for animals and humans...
  - taneq 10y ago
    Less than a gram of swarf or other miscellaneous small sharp metal bits will do you in, so yeah.
- narag 10y ago
  Are those 300 g of pure cannabinoids or 300 g of dried flowers?
  - Beltiras 10y ago
    It was in the context of the dogs eating cannabis that their owners were careless about so I'm assuming dried and pruned buds.
    - squeaky-clean 10y ago
      [Citation Needed] 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.1476-4431.2012.00818.x/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1476-4431.2012....
- chimeracoder 10y ago
  It's true. Marijuana is actually one of the very few substances with no known LD50. Technically there is hypothesized to be one, but it is so high that it would be literally impossible to ingest that much (you'd suffocate from lack of oxygen first, and that's assuming you somehow weren't incapacitated from being so high that you were able to keep smoking. So medically, that's considered equivalent to "no lethal dose exists". http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2013/03/25/how-safe-is-marijuana-a-toxicological-perspective/ http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2013/03/25/how-safe-is-mari...
  - Beltiras 10y ago
    If you eat it you can ingest the dosage confirmed to kill dogs.
    - chimeracoder 10y ago
      > If you eat it you can ingest the dosage confirmed to kill dogs 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".
    - NTripleOne 10y ago
      It starts to get really complicated once you involve edibles, though - you can't just straight up eat plant matter and have it take effect as if you'd eaten a brownie, even though the dosage would technically be much, much higher if you straight up ate a bud. 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.
      - GordonS 10y ago
        It's also that THC isn't very psychoactive until it's been decarboxylated. The process of heating it within a particular temperature does this (e.g smoking, vaping, baking)
akiselev 10y ago
"Overdose injuries" is a ridiculous umbrella classification that covers both fatal and non-fatal incidents. By this definition, the average college student experiences at least one alcohol related overdose injury a week but, oh lord, think of the children! That said, we've come a long way from the era of Hearst, Anslinger, and the racist "degenerates" rhetoric.
- tunap 10y ago
  Remaineds me of the joke: Most famous last words: "Hold my beer". And in spite of the ubiquitous alcohol related injuries & mortalities alcohol is peddled 24/7 on every marketing platform to date. Dichotomous & disingenuous argument.
  - NTripleOne 10y ago
    "hold my joint, I'm gonna go eat cheetos on the couch until I die"
    - at-fates-hands 10y ago
      Or go get in your car and get into an accident. Marijuana-related fatal car accidents surge in Washington state after legalization: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/10/marijuana-related-fatal-car-accidents-surge-washin/ 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.
      - NTripleOne 10y ago
        Jeez dude, it was a joke - calm down. 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".
draugadrotten 10y ago
Have you considered that overdosing could lead to injury but not death.
- codr4life 10y ago
  But it's practically impossible to overdose, you'll fall asleep before you get anywhere close. It's one of the least harmful substances in active use.
tom_mellior 10y ago
The "Committe Conclusions" (http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Report%20Files/2017/Cannabis-Health-Effects/Cannabis-conclusions.pdf http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Report%20File...) puts it like this: 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) I guess the full report goes into more detail on "overdose injuries, including respiratory distress".
dgacmu 10y ago
tl;dr: Quite rare but non-zero instances of vomiting, respiratory distress, or coma, in some cases requiring intubation (which, if you've never had that done, is a pretty annoying intervention, and can cause airway injury), or mechanical ventilation. 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)."
kefka 10y ago
I would say that's false. I would put it up around .5kG/1kG as a kinetic object about 4 meters above your head and dropped. It would likely kill 50% of the population it was dropped on :-D

Beltiras 10y ago

Read a funny statement in a study the other day. The lethal dose of cannabis for dogs is 3g/kg. Don't know if it translates to humans but if the order of magnitude is about the same then it takes on the order of 300 grams ingested to kill a human.

woliveirajr 10y ago
I bet that ingested paper or plastic have a lower FD50 for animals and humans...
- taneq 10y ago
  Less than a gram of swarf or other miscellaneous small sharp metal bits will do you in, so yeah.
narag 10y ago
Are those 300 g of pure cannabinoids or 300 g of dried flowers?
- Beltiras 10y ago
  It was in the context of the dogs eating cannabis that their owners were careless about so I'm assuming dried and pruned buds.
  - squeaky-clean 10y ago
    [Citation Needed] 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.1476-4431.2012.00818.x/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1476-4431.2012....
chimeracoder 10y ago
It's true. Marijuana is actually one of the very few substances with no known LD50. Technically there is hypothesized to be one, but it is so high that it would be literally impossible to ingest that much (you'd suffocate from lack of oxygen first, and that's assuming you somehow weren't incapacitated from being so high that you were able to keep smoking. So medically, that's considered equivalent to "no lethal dose exists". http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2013/03/25/how-safe-is-marijuana-a-toxicological-perspective/ http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2013/03/25/how-safe-is-mari...
- Beltiras 10y ago
  If you eat it you can ingest the dosage confirmed to kill dogs.
  - chimeracoder 10y ago
    > If you eat it you can ingest the dosage confirmed to kill dogs 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".
  - NTripleOne 10y ago
    It starts to get really complicated once you involve edibles, though - you can't just straight up eat plant matter and have it take effect as if you'd eaten a brownie, even though the dosage would technically be much, much higher if you straight up ate a bud. 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.
    - GordonS 10y ago
      It's also that THC isn't very psychoactive until it's been decarboxylated. The process of heating it within a particular temperature does this (e.g smoking, vaping, baking)

akiselev 10y ago

"Overdose injuries" is a ridiculous umbrella classification that covers both fatal and non-fatal incidents. By this definition, the average college student experiences at least one alcohol related overdose injury a week but, oh lord, think of the children! That said, we've come a long way from the era of Hearst, Anslinger, and the racist "degenerates" rhetoric.

tunap 10y ago
Remaineds me of the joke: Most famous last words: "Hold my beer". And in spite of the ubiquitous alcohol related injuries & mortalities alcohol is peddled 24/7 on every marketing platform to date. Dichotomous & disingenuous argument.
- NTripleOne 10y ago
  "hold my joint, I'm gonna go eat cheetos on the couch until I die"
  - at-fates-hands 10y ago
    Or go get in your car and get into an accident. Marijuana-related fatal car accidents surge in Washington state after legalization: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/10/marijuana-related-fatal-car-accidents-surge-washin/ 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.
    - NTripleOne 10y ago
      Jeez dude, it was a joke - calm down. 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".

draugadrotten 10y ago

Have you considered that overdosing could lead to injury but not death.

codr4life 10y ago
But it's practically impossible to overdose, you'll fall asleep before you get anywhere close. It's one of the least harmful substances in active use.

tom_mellior 10y ago

The "Committe Conclusions" (http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Report%20Files/2017/Cannabis-Health-Effects/Cannabis-conclusions.pdf http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Report%20File...) puts it like this: 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) I guess the full report goes into more detail on "overdose injuries, including respiratory distress".

dgacmu 10y ago

tl;dr: Quite rare but non-zero instances of vomiting, respiratory distress, or coma, in some cases requiring intubation (which, if you've never had that done, is a pretty annoying intervention, and can cause airway injury), or mechanical ventilation. 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)."

kefka 10y ago

I would say that's false. I would put it up around .5kG/1kG as a kinetic object about 4 meters above your head and dropped. It would likely kill 50% of the population it was dropped on :-D