They follow the story of “Evan” a self-proclaimed cannabis addict who has been struggling to get sober. While legalization may not be the cause of his weed dependence, it certainly hasn’t helped his struggle. He recalls advertisements with lines such as, “Shop. It’s legal” and “Hello marijuana, goodbye hangover” being “in [his] face” during his hard-fought seven weeks of sobriety.

It was “seven weeks of sleepless nights, intermittent nausea, irritability, trouble focusing, and psychological turmoil” he said, with quitting not being so much of a ‘can’ as a ‘must’.

Evan isn’t alone with his struggle. Similar struggles or addictions are becoming more and more commonplace with the share of cannabis users who consume the drug daily or near-daily having jumped 50 percent in the last few years.

This jump coupled with “increasingly permissive cannabis legislation, attitudes, and lower risk perception” as the National Institute of Health put it, has public-health experts worried. People across the country have gone “from treating cannabis as if it were as dangerous as heroin to treating it as if it were as benign as kombucha”.

The article interviewed Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, who said that the most compelling evidence that marijuana can be damaging comes from the users themselves.

“In large national surveys, about one in 10 people who smoke it say they have a lot of problems. They say things like, ‘I have trouble quitting. I think a lot about quitting and I can’t do it. I smoked more than I intended to. I neglect responsibilities.”

“There are plenty of people who have problems with it, in terms of things like concentration, short-term memory, and motivation. People will say, ‘Oh, that’s just you fuddy-duddy doctors.’ Actually no. It’s millions of people who use the drug who say that it causes problems,” Keith Humphreys responded for the article.

On the flip side, Jolene Forman, an attorney at the Drug Policy Alliance, said that “the vast majority of people who use cannabis are not going to be problematic users.” She argued that the legalization of cannabis would help. Legalizing weed has opened up the doors to having a strictly regulated market for the drug.

Lots of different proposals and sides were discussed within the article on what exactly should be done concerning marijuana with its newfound legalization happening quickly across the country. But the article ended by addressing the issue it set out to cover in the first place, “perhaps the most important [issue] might be reintroducing some reasonable skepticism about cannabis, especially until scientists have a better sense of the health effects of high-potency products, used frequently.”

For example, take a look at e-cigarettes and the quick shift that has taken place over the last couple of weeks on the safety of using these devices. Over the past couple of years, vaping has gained huge popularity especially among teens with 37% of high school seniors reporting that they’ve used the e-cigarettes. However a recent bout of deaths across the country, coupled with individuals reporting serious lung problems, have health officials now questioning exactly how safe the devices are. Harvard Health Publishing posted an article earlier this week questioning the safety of the devices and stating, “It took many years to recognize the damage cigarettes can cause. We could be on a similar path with vaping.”

Is marijuana in that same category? Not enough research or time has really passed to know yet. But as The Atlantic put it, “Until then, listening to and believing the hundreds of thousands of users who argue marijuana is not always benign might be a good start.”

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Professor David Nutt, a psychiatrist and director of neuropsychopharmacology in the Division of Brain Sciences at Imperial College, London, set out to measure just that. He and his team worked on using statistical data to help them measure the potential for and consequences of using certain substances. In completing this research they helped answer an interesting question: What are the five most addictive substances in the world?

1. Heroin

Heroin was listed as the most addictive drug on their scale with a score of 3 out of 3. Heroin is an opiate that causes the level of dopamine in the brain’s reward system to increase by up to 200%. It’s also a very dangerous drug considering the fact that a lethal dose of heroin is only 5 times more than the dose required to get high. Heroin was also rated as the second most harmful drug in terms of damage to users and society within an estimated market of $68 billion dollars for illegal opiates worldwide.

2. Cocaine

Cocaine was listed as number two on their list of addictive substances for its ability to prevent neurons from turning off your brain’s dopamine signal. Dopamine can rise up to more than three times the normal level when on cocaine. In addition to those addicting side effects, it is also extremely dangerous as crack cocaine was listed as the third most damaging drug with powered cocaine ranking at fifth most damaging.

3. Nicotine

Nicotine is the main addictive ingredient in tobacco and was named number three on Nutt’s list. More than two-thirds of Americans who have tried smoking reported becoming dependent during their life. How dangerous is smoking? A 2002 study estimated that tobacco will kill more than 8 million people annually by 2030.

4. Barbiturates (“downers”)

Barbiturates, also known as downers, barbs, blue bullets, nembies, are a type of drug that were initially used to treat anxiety and induce sleep. However, they have long been abused for their ability to cause euphoria at low doses. These drugs can be extremely dangerous because at higher doses they can be lethal due to their ability to suppress breathing. Serious barbiturate abuse and dependence was common when these drugs were more easily available, but this number has seen a significant decline as prescriptions today are not as easily obtained.

5. Alcohol

Although it is legal in both the U.S. and U.K., alcohol scored number five on their list of addictive substances with a 1.9 out of 3 on their scale. In lab experiments they found that alcohol increased dopamine in the brain’s reward system by 40% to 360%. The more alcohol that was consumed, the higher the dopamine levels got. While it is a legal and commonly used substance, alcohol is still dangerous especially when consumed in large quantities. A study conducted by the World Health Organization estimated that 3 million people died in 2012 due to damage caused by drinking. It’s also estimated that 22% of people who have taken a drink will develop dependence on alcohol at some point in their life.

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