If you do anything specifically to get intoxicated, that’s not ideal. Intoxication can be the necessary or accidental side effect of something, from pain medication to a runner’s elevated endorphins, but if you want and try to get buzzed, high, wasted or drunk, that suggests a problem. If you feel you have to, that suggests dependence. If you can’t function without doing it, if you spend much of the time between periods of intoxication actively planning how and when next to get intoxicated, that suggests addiction.

In 1954, James Olds and Peter Milner discovered that mice could become so addicted to stimulating the nucleus accumbens or “pleasure center” of the brain (by pressing a button attached to an electrode implanted in their brains) that they would forego food and drink. Addiction works in a similar manner.

Doctors and researchers still debate whether marijuana is physically addictive, but they also concede that anything can become psychologically addictive. That’s substance use disorder. You can’t ban everything, and the main reason (besides politics) that marijuana is still banned under federal law and 20 or so states’ laws is probably because it is intoxicating under “normal” use.

Advocates for legalization counter that it has fewer complications or health risks than even alcohol – detox from heavy alcohol abuse can be fatal – which has always been legal except for Prohibition. It’s a much touted statistic that no one has ever died from a marijuana overdose or marijuana poisoning.

Then last week came word that there may have been such a death. Today.com reported that the parents of 22-year-old Michael Ziobro say his death by heart arrhythmia was caused by smoking medical marijuana, which he took for symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. The medical examiner couldn’t confirm that diagnosis, or any contributing cause of death. Smoking marijuana can raise blood pressure and heart rate.

There was at least one earlier such claim in England – an elderly woman found dead with a half-smoked joint in her room – but Snopes.com ruled it “Unproven”: “The fact of the matter is that unexplained, sudden deaths occasionally strike down healthy individuals. The absence of a clear explanation for a death should not compel acceptance of a scientifically implausible one, however.”

A recently published exploratory study suggested that cannabis use increases the likelihood of death from hypertension, but it was a small study and didn’t control for all variables. Even the lead author said more research is needed. If marijuana was causing cardiac arrest in otherwise health individuals, there would be many other cases well-publicized by opponents of cannabis legalization.

There are legitimate reasons to regulate marijuana and to study its possible benefits and harms. Widespread cardiac arrest doesn’t seem to be one of them.