Let’s be frank: Most highs for you are kind of a downer for the planet. The conditions under which illegal drugs are produced make it impossible for the government to enforce any sort of clean manufacturing regulations, and the long-standing “War on Drugs” inflicts its own environmental damage. (Think of the RoundUp herbicide sprayed on 120,000 hectares of rural Colombia each year.) There are some ways to measure the eco-credentials of various narcotics, though. To understand how various drugs affect the environment, we need to take a close look at where each one comes from and compare the ways they’re harvested or synthesized.

Slate: Which illegal drug is best for the environment?

Ecstasy (made from sassafras oil derived from endangered trees) and crystal meth (enormous carbon footprint due to chemicals being imported from India and China) are the worst. Cannabis is the best.

I hadn’t heard an ecological argument for ending the war on drugs before.

(via Dangerous Minds)