[SOURCE: PROCON.ORG]
PROCON.ORG: Much of the medical marijuana discussion has focused on the safety of marijuana compared to the safety of FDA-approved drugs. On June 24, 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. We chose Jan. 1, 1997 as our starting date as it is the beginning of the first year following the Nov. 1996 approval of the first state medical marijuana laws. MORE
EDITOR’S NOTE: Just to clarify, in the eight year period the study looked at, 10,008 people were killed by one of the 17 FDA-approved drugs the study focused on. During that same period, the amount of people killed by marijuana was ZERO.