The Coptic Church, I believe, introduced the idea of Christ using cannabis oil.
Many believers use the fact that "there is no law besides that which God has established" as ammunition against the "heretical" idea that marijuana use is permissible. And yet many also fail to realize that drugs such as oxycodone, hydromorphone, morphine, fentanyl, etc. are responsible for a tremendous number of deaths, hospitalizations, and accounts of physical dependency. Most of the time death is caused by abuse, as with hospitalizations (I assume), but dependency can occur whether you're taking it as you're supposed to or not. This often causes MORE pain, which can be even more debilitating that what you were taking it for in the first place. It generally takes a while for the body to become addicted and produce severe withdrawal symptoms from what I understand, but even if you do as you're told by a doctor, these drugs are risky.
I couldn't find an exact number, but the number of deaths from prescription drug overdose in 2011 was higher than the number of deaths from traffic accidents.
Number of deaths from marijuana overdose? Zero. Still. Now this doesn't mean that there haven't been fatalities resulting from someone driving under the influence (or doing something equally stupid under the influence). Honestly in my opinion, that's just a lack of common sense. Marijuana does not just "do that" to people.
People all hear about the horrors of meth. Meth is short for methamphetamine. There is a weaker substance called amphetamine - and guess what that is? That's Adderall, the little orange pill that many, MANY parents give their children and teens every day. These two drugs share more than a name, though. They do the EXACT SAME THING - go into the brain and release high amounts of dopamine and norepinephrine. Dopamine is your pleasure and reward chemical; it's also associated with motor function. Excessive levels results in schizophrenia (why repeated use can result in "amphetamine" psychosis, a temporary condition that mimics it), too little dopamine results in Parkinson's disease and often contributes to depression. Norepinephrine is also known as noradrenaline. It is your fight or flight chemical. When a man pulls a gun, a vast amount of norepinephrine gets released, shutting down all other functions of your body (such as appetite or laughter) and forcing your brain to focus on the here-and-now to make a decision. For some reason, people with ADHD need adrenal stimulation to focus, and the respond well to the drugs' effect on these two neurotransmitters.
The only difference between meth and amphetamine, aside from the first one being made mostly in clandestine labs with a concoction of poisonous chemicals, is that the "methyl" prefix means that it is more easily soluble in water, making it easier to cross the brain-barrier. Your brain basically soaks more of it up, making it stronger and needing a lower dose to have the same effect. Either drug greatly increases your heart rate and blood pressure. They both cause excessive sweating and can lead to irritability, paranoia, hallucinations (at high or repeated doses), and can be neurotoxic. Long term meth users often fry the ends off of their dopamine receptors, drastically reducing their effectiveness and making it hard to feel any pleasure at all. Adderall, however, can do the same thing. (One of the MANY problems with meth is the fact that it's impossible to measure doses, and the most popular methods of intake - smoking and shooting - lead to extremely high blood concentrations of the drug, increasing its already strong effects on the nervous and cardiovascular system.)
Before you think that "well meth is too strong anyways, Adderall is weaker and safer", keep in mind that there is prescription meth available too - yes, methamphetamine hydrochloride, brand name Desoxyn.
Obviously most Christians don't endorse the abuse of prescription drugs, anyways. However, whether you believe they should be reserved for strict circumstances or not, the toxicology reports DON'T lie. If you're against the medical use of marijuana because of the harm it causes, surely you're also against the others, which are far more dangerous in every way. Problem is most people simply take a side - pot's illegal, it's bad; the other drugs are ok because the doctors said they were safe, and God wouldn't allow it anyways.
Adderall = speed; fentanyl is stronger than heroin (which is legal for a handful of uses in the UK)...
...marijuana is bad?