A new study has confirmed what most of us have already known: there is almost nothing deadly about ingesting marijuana. In fact, alcohol was found to be 114 times more deadly than weed, which is crazy when you consider the lack of stigma and general availability of the stuff compared to its green counterpart. Guess the folks in places like Alaska, Washington, and Colorado have yet another thing to celebrate in the wake of their recent legalization wins. Hey D.C., you listenin'?

The findings, published in Nature subsidiary Scientific Reports, mostly proves just how misguided and outdated the Controlled Substances Act is in regards to drug use. The scientists, using calculations that compared the lethal levels of ingestion for several controlled substances — alcohol, tobacco, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, meth, and marijuana —found that weed was the only one that posed a low instance of death. And it's an extremely low one at that:

So the evidence is clear as to what needs to happen next: governments should stop focusing on the drugs that don't really kill people and start educating the masses on the ones that really matter with their very real side effects (in terms of health risk): alcohol, tobacco, heroin, cocaine — all controlled substances that have a far, far higher mortality rate risk than pot. In fact, this is an idea also posited by the authors, who recommend that "risk management prioritization towards alcohol and tobacco rather than illicit drugs" be the way forward. They even go so far as to condemn the current classification of marijuana, given that its low amount of risk suggests "a strict legal regulatory approach rather than the current prohibition approach" might be a more productive measure.

Particularly when one considers the fact that this particular study's authors believe that current legislative classifications of psychoactive drugs "lack a scientific basis." No doubt these findings confirm that belief.

Because to put it simply — via the Washington Post's Christopher Ingraham — "It takes extraordinary chutzpah to rail against the dangers of marijuana use by day and then go home to unwind with a glass of far more lethal stuff in the evening." To which we say: preach, sir. Preach.