History And Uses Of Marijuana Essay, Research Paper

Whether you call it Hemp, Mary Jane, Pot, Weed; it doesn’t

matter. It is still Cannabis Sativa, or cannabis for short. And it is

still illegal. The use of marijuana as an intoxicant in the United

States became a problem of public concern in the 1930s. Regulatory

laws were passed in 1937, and criminal penalties were instituted for

possession and sale of the drug. “Marijuana” refers to the dried

leaves and flowers of the cannabis plant, which contains the

non-narcotic chemical THC at various potencies. It is smoked or eaten

to produce the feeling of being “high.” The different strains of this

herb produce different sensual effects, ranging from a sedative to a

stimulant.

The term “marijuana” is a word with indistinct origins. Some

believe it is derived from the Mexican words for “Mary Jane”; others

hold that the name comes from the Portuguese word marigu-ano, which

means “intoxicant”. The use of marijuana in the 1960’s might lead one

to surmise that marihuana use spread explosively. The chronicle of its

3,000 year history, however, shows that this “explosion” has been

characteristic only of the contemporary scene. The plant has been

grown for fiber and as a source of medicine for several thousand

years, but until 500~ AD its use as a mind-altering drug was almost

solely confined in India. The drug and its uses reached the Middle and

Near East during the next several centuries, and then moved across

North Africa, appeared in Latin America and the Caribbean, and finally

entered the United States in the early decades of this century.

Marijuana can even be used as “Biomass” fuel, where the pulp (hurd) of

the hemp plant can be burned as is or processed into charcoal,

methanol, methane, or gasoline. This process is called destructive

distillation, or ‘pyrolysis.’ Fuels made out of plants like this are

called ‘biomass’ fuels. This charcoal may be burned in today’s

coal-powered electric generators. Methanol makes a good automobile

fuel, in fact it is used in professional automobile races. It may

someday replace gasoline.

Marijuana has many medical purposes also. The cannabis extract

was available as a medicine legally in this country until 1937, and

was sold as a nerve tonic-but mankind has been using cannabis

medicines much longer than that. Marijuana appears in almost every

known book of medicine written by ancient scholars and wise men. It is

usually ranked among the top medicines, called ‘panaceas’, a word

which means ‘cure-all’. The list of diseases which cannabis can be

used for includes: multiple sclerosis, cancer treatment, AIDS (and

AIDS treatment), glaucoma, depression, epilepsy, migraine headaches,

asthma, pruritis, sclerodoma, severe pain, and dystonia. This list

does not even consider the other medicines which can be made out of

marijuana-these are just some of the illnesses for which people smoke

or eat whole marijuana today. There are over 60 chemicals in marijuana

which may have medical uses. It is relatively easy to extract these

into food or beverage, or into some sort of lotion, using butter, fat,

oil, or alcohol. One chemical, cannabinol, may be useful to help

people who cannot sleep. Another is taken from premature buds and is

called cannabidiolic acid. It is a powerful disinfectant. Marijuana

dissolved in rubbing alcohol helps people with the skin disease herpes

control their sores, and a salve like this was one of the earliest

medical uses for cannabis. The leaves were once used in bandages and a

relaxing non-psychoactive herbal tea can be made from small cannabis

stems. Also cannabis, as any other biomass fuels, are clean burning

and do not increase the amount of CO2 the atmosphere, therefore making

breathing easier for may people.

Attempts at legalizing marijuana in the US going on for a long

time. But just recently two states, California and Arizona, voted to

legalize it for medical purposes only, but the US government still

enforces the federal law, stating that federal law overrules state

law. As said by Dr Cliff Schaffer: “In all my study and review of the

information regarding this issue, one question keeps coming back to

me. Let’s assume – for the sake of argument – that marijuana has no

medical value whatsoever, despite the fact that it has a several

thousand year history of medical use and that a prescription drug is

made from its primary active ingredient. Let’s assume – for the sake

of argument – that all these medical marijuana patients are just

fooling themselves. Even in that case, what would we stand to gain as

a society by punishing sick people and putting them through an already

overloaded criminal justice system? Even if they are deluding

themselves-what benefit is there to prosecuting sick people?”

In conclusion to this, it is important to state that there

have been hundreds of studies showing that smoking cannabis is

potentially harmful to the brain and body and the same number of

studies almost, if not totally, contradicting what these have stated.