One question that has haunted Americans for a long time is: “Should the use of marijuana be legalized? ” Some say, “Yes”, while other say, “No”. According to Funk and Wagnall’s New Encyclopedia, marijuana is defined as “a mixture of leaves, stems, and flowering tops of the Indian hemp plant Cannabis sativa, smoked or eaten for its hallucinogenic and pleasure-giving effects. ” Bram, Phillips, Dickey, 445 Owning marijuana was made a crime in 1937 when Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act.
Despite this law the drug was still somewhat commonly used. Here we are years later, still without a satisfactory answer to the question.I think that legalizing the use of marijuana would have many medical benefits, economical benefits, and would decrease the incidence of crime. There are others who disagree.
These people feel that legalization would lead to the formation of other habits and to health problems, such as, the use of a harsher drug and to psychological and personality problems that can come from using marijuana. These individuals feel that the negatives of marijuana use far outweigh the positives, and feel that the use of marijuana should remain illegal. To some people marijuana is considered a “gateway” drug.Legalizing marijuana would lead to the use of other, much more harsh drugs.
From the book Drugs, Teens, and Recovery, Lauren, a teenager that got mixed up in drugs describes how she got involved with marijuana, then with cocaine. She says, “I was ten, in the fifth grade, the first time I smoked pot. I liked pot a lot better than drinking because it was easier. I loved it.
Pot and alcohol, that’s all I needed. I didn’t want to get into anything else”. She continues, “About this time, I started getting obsessed with cocaine and thinking about what the high would be like”.Just like Lauren people can start off with just smoking marijuana but they would get the urge to try something a little bit stronger.
Chesney, 46 Marijuana usage has many medical benefits. It became popular as a medicine in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. Then, marijuana was used to treat general headaches, migraine headaches, depression, muscular tension, insomnia, and menstrual cramps. Today, marijuana has proven to be beneficial in the treatment of many more medical conditions including glaucoma, cancer, and asthma.
In 1976, Robert C. Randall became the very first American to ever gain legal access to marijuana for medical purposes. In Marijuana, The Patients’ Fight for Medicinal Pot, he describes how marijuana helped him through his battle with glaucoma, “Marijuana has helped control it. Marijuana is helping me to save my eyesight”.
Randall, 154 Marijuana has helped Mr. Randall in his fight with glaucoma, and has the potential to aid in the treatment of many other medical situations.Another person that has gotten relief from marijuana is Dan Shapiro. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease in 1987 when he called a friend who had also battled cancer.
His friend’s advice, Shapiro says, came in a six-word package: “Cancer is grim, man, get weed. ” Shapiro has been in remission for nine years and has stated that marijuana helped him stay functional despite the notoriously-debilitating chemotherapy. “Sealy, Geraldine “Thanks Mom” abcnews. com These two cases shows that marijuana is a help to people who need it.
Marijuana is legal in one state for medical purposes only. In 1996, voters in California approved a law that relaxes regulation on medical marijuana.The federal government cannot take action against California doctors who recommend marijuana to their patients. Marijuana has eased the pain of chemotherapy, sever muscle spasms caused b multiple sclerosis, weight-loss due to the AIDS virus and other problems.
Experts from the National Institute of Health or NIH have confirmed that marijuana is an effective, safe and inexpensive alternative for treating nausea caused by AIDS medications and cancer treatments and other like ailments as glaucoma, muscle spasms, intractable pain, epilepsy, anorexia, asthma, insomnia, depression and other disorders.Other such ailments in which marijuana has been said to help are Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, repetitive migraines and Alzheimer’s, but the NIH has not reported those results. The National Institute of Medicine shows us that the benefits from cannabis short term use doesn’t hinder the possible hazards of its long-term use. Marijuana has beneficial outlook for some illnesses, but experimentation is limited due to it unlawfulness.
The positive effects of this drug are helping a limited number so doctors have tried to work with the government to create a reliable way to distribute the drug without smoking it.The work being done to find a chemical fabricate should clarify that marijuana has some medicinal value. In 1986 a THC based synthetic called Marinol was approved by the Food and Drug Administration, unfortunately it did not treat as well as cannabis. Government experts have indicated that marijuana does relieve pain, and other disorders, but it does not cure them, therefore can not be legalized as a prescription drug.
In many cases marijuana has been the building block for recovery, and it has given sick people a chance to move on without the tension and pain.Government experts have concealed some information about similar prescription drugs such as, percocet and codeine. Both are very addictive and they only relieve the pain. Medicinal marijuana has similar side effects as the often prescribed stimulants, but it is not quite as addictive.
Marijuana is not so different from other frequently prescribed stimulants, but its stereotypical summary has the government questioning its output. Marijuana has undergone analysis for its use as a medicine and the results have shown improvements in the patients who were treated with this drug.Using the drug can alleviate pain and nausea, and help patients hold down food, allowing them to stay stronger” Sealey, Geraldine, “Medicinal Dope on the Docket, abcnews. com Based on extrapolations from animal experiments, the ratio of marijuana’s lethal dose to its effective dose is 40,000 to 1, compared to between 10 and 20 to 1 for aspirin and between 4 and 10 to 1 for alcohol.
Possibly an agreement could be established concerning procedures for further development and treatment. I feel that if marijuana was legal the people who need it for medical purposes could get it.Legalization of marijuana has many economical benefits. Ethan Nadelman, an assistant professor of politics and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University wrote in the book Drug Abuse, Opposing Viewpoints, about several strategies of legalizing the use of marijuana.
One strategy would consist of the government exercising strong regulatory powers over all large-scale production and sale of marijuana. The second strategy is to make drug-treatment programs available to all those who need them.The last, but not least, strategy was to make marijuana available only to competent adults. This legalization strategy would allow the United States to reduce government expenditures on enforcing drug laws and would allow the United States to enjoy a new tax revenue from legal drug production and sales.
According to Nadelman, his strategy would increase public treasuries of at least ten billion a year and maybe much more. This strategy would have many economical benefits on the United States. Former Mayor of Baltimore Kurt Schmoke was a strong believer in legalizing drugs.In the article, “The War on Drugs”, he says …the strategy for fighting it didn’t work, and as a result the war lasted too long and cost too many lives.
The same is true of the war on drugs. It’s time to bring this enervating war to an end. It’s time for peace”. Gallagher, “Why the War on Drugs Will Never Succeed”, 4 I believe, with Mr.
Schmoke, that my legalizing marijuana, the crime rate would decrease in the United States. The streets of America would automatically become much better and safer places. The drug dealers would possibly be put out of business, and the shoot outs over drug related crimes would likely end.Since cannabis arrests constitute 44 percent of all drug apprehensions, the Marijuana Policy Project MPP estimates that the governments war on pot smokers costs taxpayers $9.
2 billion annually” Feder, Murdock, “Symposium” 1 Instead of drug addicts shoplifting, mugging, breaking into homes, and stealing from others to pay outrageous prices for marijuana from dealers, they could support their habit by simply holding an honest, decent paying job. From the book Drugs, Teens, and Recovery, Bobby who was a freshman in high school knows what it is like to have to steal to support his drug habit. He says.For drug money, I stole a lot.
I didn’t take much from my own parents, but when I’d sleep over at another kid’s house, I’d get into his parent’s bedroom and see what I could take. I can’t express the torment I was feeling” Chesney, 87 According to the chairperson of the advisory board of the Drug Policy Foundation in Washington, DC, legalizing marijuana would have a very positive effect on the public.Those who want marijuana legalized feel that they are not endorsing drug use, but instead, are recognizing the rights of Americans to make their own choices, which is very important to the future of America. It is safe to say that at some point in the not-too-distant future, America will confront the question of whether or not to legalize the use and cultivation of marijuana.
A recent poll shows that support for legalization has reached its highest level since the question was first asked thirty years ago, with 34 percent supporting a liberalization of policy” Linker, “Going to Pot” 1 I believe that marijuana should be legalized for the reasons of medicinal purposes, economical purposes and crime purposes.With all the research and time spent on the use of marijuana as a medical treatment, one would think that cannabis is beneficial and could possibly lead to other developments for treatment of disease and pain.There are proven facts that the NIH have provided, but government officials have their own set of ideas. Experimental programs, which have been going on for thirty years, have established the effectiveness of marijuana’s treatment.
“Marijuana legalization is a conservative idea whose time indeed has come” Murdock, Feder, “Symposium” 1
