Marijuana Essay, Research Paper

People have been using Marijuana as a medicine for thousands of years, beginning in China, India, and the Middle East. The plant’s therapeutic potential became known in Western countries during the nineteenth century. From 1840 to 1900, more than a hundred articles on cannabis appeared in European and American medical journals, recommending it as an appetite stimulant, muscle relaxant, painkiller, sedative, and anti-convulsions. The use of Marijuana should be legalized for the benefits of individuals suffering from a variety of medical problems. Marijuana as a medicine, however, cannot be established with the Government?s permission to test the drug and legalize it.

Patients should have the right to use any medical means necessary to control our diseases. Patients with cancer find marijuana controls there vomiting, allowing them to continue chemotherapy. Patients find marijuana helps the “wasting syndrome” that often characterizes AIDS. Patients with spinal injuries and multiple sclerosis find relief from severe muscle spasms (plasticity) that complicate nerve damage. Patients with glaucoma have derived benefit from marijuana when conventional treatments have failed. Government experts have indicated that marijuana does relieve pain, and other disorders, but it does not cure them, therefore cannot be legalized as a prescription drug. However, the Government has legalized a drug called Tylenol 3. The two main drugs used in Tylenol 3 are precocity 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 as addictive as Tylenol 3.

The Government proclaims there is no therapeutic value in the medicinal use of marijuana, but they do not have hard evidence to prove it. Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, expressed: ?the government has demonized all drug use without differentiation and has systematically and hysterically resisted science.? Doctors have expressed opposite opinions as well, making this issue very controversial. Because not all doctors who research the topic for medicinal purposes feel cannabis should be a ?legal? prescribed medicine, smoking marijuana is risky, but also recommended that critically ill patients should be allowed to use it under closely monitored settings.

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. Research showed that marijuana reduced the interlobular pressure that can lead to blindness in glaucoma patients. Migraine sufferers found relief from their headaches, and victims of spinal injuries, multiple sclerosis, and epilepsy reported that marijuana seemed to control their spasms. 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. Marijuana has eased the pain of chemotherapy, severe muscle spasms caused by 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 other such ailments as glaucoma, muscle spasms, intractable pain, epilepsy, anorexia, asthma, insomnia, depression and other disorders. The government, however, should legalize it, put taxes, and an age limit. For marijuana has never been proven to cause death.

I believe that marijuana should be legalized in order to help people suffering from terminal diseases such as AIDS, Cancer and Glaucoma. Prohibition of marijuana over the past decades has not diminished the demand of the drug in the United States. I believe that marijuana is here to stay in our society and is only going through the stages that alcohol had during the prohibition era.