WATCH: Carly Fiorina says ‘pot is worse than beer, legalization is a bad idea’

Aspiring presidential candidate Carly Fiorina is catching flak this week for false statements about the relative safety of marijuana, as well as conflating cannabis legalization with the death of her daughter from alcohol and prescription pills.

During the presidential debates last week, Fiorina responded to a question about cannabis legalization by saying that:

“My husband Frank and I buried a child to drug addiction. We must invest more in the treatment of drugs. … We are misleading young people when we tell them that marijuana is just like having a beer. It’s not. And the marijuana they’re smoking today is not the same marijuana that Jeb Bush smoked 40 years ago. We need to tell young people the truth. Drug addiction is an epidemic and it is taking too many of our young people. I know this sadly from personal experience.”

Fiorina’s daughter died at age 35 from alcohol and prescription drug abuse, not marijuana, Fiorina wrote in her auto-biography.

Cannabis is also 110 times less toxic than alcohol. About 88,000 Americans will die this year from alcohol’s health effects. Cannabis has no lethal overdose, Vox notes.

The charge that marijuana is stronger now also rings hollow. Increased potency means users smoke far less of the plant to get the same effects. Cannabis smoking is also not associated with lung cancer.

Cannabis is also far less addictive than legal drugs alcohol, tobacco, or caffeine, let alone the opioids which are driving the nation’s addiction epidemic, the Washington Post reports.

Fiorina has also lied about the state of cannabis research, saying “we don’t understand what it does to your body.” FactCheck.org called that claim “inaccurate”.

Via: blog.sfgate.com