Much of the medical marijuana discussion has focused on the safety of marijuana compared to the safety of FDA-approved drugs. On 24 June 2005 ProCon.org sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to find the number of deaths caused by marijuana compared to the number of deaths caused by 17 FDA-approved drugs.
Twelve of these FDA-approved drugs were chosen because they are commonly prescribed in place of medical marijuana, while the remaining five FDA-approved drugs were randomly selected because they are widely used and recognized by the general public.
ProCon.org chose:
-1 January 1997 as starting date as it is the beginning of the first year following November 1996 approval of the first state medical marijuana laws (such as California's Proposition 215).
-The FDA reports from 13 September 2005 to 14 Octomber 2005 included drug deaths "to present", which was the date each report was compiled for our request. We cut off the counting as of 30 June 2005 to provide a uniform end-date to the various reports.