Marijuana Should Be Legal Essay Research Paper

Marijuana Should Be Legal Essay, Research Paper

Seven Leaves Aren’t Bad:

Marijuana Should Be Legal

Thesis: Should marijuana be legalized and can it be used in positive ways. In 1937, the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act prohibited the use, sale, and cultivation of hemp/marijuana in the United States. Marijuana is a drug that is highly used through out the world. It comes from the cannabis plant. THC which stands for delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol is the major psychoactive ingredient. Over sixty five million Americans today use marijuana. Today it is a lot stronger than how it used to be in the 1970’s because of careful cultivation. It can be smoked threw a pipe, joint, or it can even be used as an ingredient in food. Although the effect it has as an ingredient isn’t as strong as it would be if you smoked it. It all depends on how long the person smoking it holds in it their lungs. The more you hold it in the more the drug gets into your bloodstream. Marijuana is not just a drug to be used as to get “high” with. It is a drug that needs to become legal so it can help heal people with certain diseases and it can be useful for industrial reasons as well.

There are different feelings a person can have when you use marijuana. In low to moderate doses, marijuana typically creates a mild sense of euphoria, a sense of slowed time, a dreamy sort of self-absorption, and some impairment in thinking and communicating (Hales 491). Usually the sense of being “high” happens within thirty minutes and usually lasts about three

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hours. Sometimes when someone is new at smoking marijuana they can experience an anxiety attack. The immediate physical effects of marijuana include increased pulse rate, bloodshot eyes, dry mouth and throat, slowed reaction times, impaired motor skills, increase appetite, and diminished short-term memory (Hales 492). Some of these effects can help someone as unbelievable as it seems. If marijuana is more harmful to society than the laws, then the laws should be retained. If the laws are more harmful than the substance, the laws should be changed (Rosenthal 1).

Marijuana can reduce suffering for some illnesses out there today. A cancer patient by the name of Richard Brookhiser responded to the contention that marijuana has not allowed the necessary testing. He also rejected the argument that allowing sick people to use the drug would encourage people to use take the drug. “In November 1996, the voters of California and Arizona make it legal to use marijuana as a medicine. The Clinton administration said these actions were too rash. But for me, they came in the wrong states and four years too late. In 1992, my doctor in New York told me that I had metastasized testicular cancer, which required chemotherapy. To deal with the resulting nausea, I took legal antiemetic drugs, but after a while they didn’t work. Then, I turned to pot” (qtd. In Bender 149). Brookhiser had used marijuana to help him have cravings for food. When someone goes threw chemotherapy you lose your

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appetite and you are really nauseated. Marijuana can increase your appetite and help you want to eat your food.

Cancer patients are not the only sick people who get relief from smoking pot. It has a wide variety of therapeutic applications, and is frequently beneficial in treating many conditions. Some are people who have the AIDS virus, it can help them reduce the nausea, vomiting, and loss of appetite caused by the ailment itself and by treatment with AZT and other medicines. It can help people with Asthma. Several studies have shown that THC reacts as a bronchodilator and reverses bronchial constriction. Although conventional bronchodilators work faster, THC has been shown to last longer and with considerable less risk (Rosenthal 68). New evidence has shown that marijuana is an autoimmune modulator in arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. Marijuana can alleviate the debilitating, chronic pain caused by myriad disorders and injuries. Marijuana has been shown to help gently and naturally for people with depression and other mood disorders. In contrast, conventional antidepressant drugs like lithium, tricyclics, and MAO inhibitors have serious health risks and side effects (Rosenthal 68). Marijuana is used to prevent both grande mal and other epileptic seizures in some patients. Other patients find that they can reduce dosage of other medications while using cannabis (Rosenthal 68). In Glaucoma marijuana can reduce intracular, alleviating pain and slowing (and sometimes stopping) the progress of the condition (Rosenthal

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69). Other things like labor pains, menstrual cramps, muscle spasms and migraine headaches are all things that marijuana can help alleviate the pain. Many paraplegics and quadriplegics have discovered that cannabis not only relieves their pain more safely than opiates, but also suppresses their muscle twitches and tremors. Insomnia is a disorder where you have serious trouble sleeping. Researches have shown that pot can help people sleep, with out side effects or tolerance problems of other hypnotics. Cannanbidiol is the active ingredient in pot, which induces sleep. In 1988, Judge Francis Young of the DEA found marijuana to be “the safest therapeutic substance know to man” and urged its reclassification and distribution for medical uses.

Marijuana prohibition