Marijuana: Adverse Effects Despite Potential Benefits - Essay Sample

Introduction

Marijuana, another name Cannabis sativa or bhang, is a substance that is highly used by various people for different purposes. Many nations have, however, put in place various strategic prohibiting measures that ban and deprive the users of this substance the freedom of consuming it due to its adverse side effects. Some of the negative implications of this substance on individuals are hallucinations, impaired judgments, dizziness, and poor memory status. However, there are other beneficial significances of this substance that urges the call for its legalization. Cannabis sativa or marijuana contains some active ingredients that are highly effective in pain relieving, treatment of cancerous growths, and other inflammatory conditions in human bodies. Some of the active ingredients work more effectively than the laboratory-made medicinal substances hence making it useful in the society. Therefore, this paper focuses on highlighting some of the main aspects that underpin the legalization or removal of marijuana from the list of banned substances with reinforcing assertions from various peer reviewed literature sources.

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Research indicates that approximately 94 % of athletes use this drug in managing the acute pains they sustain in the sporting activities. It is due to the ability to cushion them and enhance conformability while training or after exercises. Moreover, due to various challenges in the athletics industry, such as top performance maintenance, management of anxiety, pressure from the stakeholders, most of the athletes opt into using cannabis sativa to control negative implications that may arise due to such challenges. The pressure to perform well, particularly during times of injury or performance plateaus, creates a situation of increased risk for anxiety, depression, and lack of sleep leading to deficits in well-being (Assi 2020). Therefore, this positive use of marijuana gives it an added advantage in the urge for its removal from the list of the banned substances. Unlike other banned substances, cannabis sativa possesses numerous medicinal importance that has positive implications in the society hence should be legalized.

Some active ingredients play a key role in enhancing the health status of the athletes through the prevention of some of the deadly illnesses that may affect the performance score of the athletes if they invade. Some of these diseases include the cancerous growths and other inflammations. The main active ingredient in cannabis sativa responsible for this preventive and treatment purpose is called cannabidiol. The latter substance, which is a key active ingredient in Cannabis sativa, is essential for the treatment of cancer and other inflammatory illness, which are common in contemporary society. Assi (2020) asserts that this ingredient has a broadband efficiency that works more efficiently as compared to the laboratory-made form of medicine in enhancing the healthy condition of respiratory organ structures line bronchioles and trachea. This aspect is mainly achieved since marijuana ingredients are obtained from a natural source where they are optimally active.

Collier (2017) asserted that, the professional football results of the study release that the user of marijuana was attributed to several positive chronic pain-relieving incidences. These chronic pains were then shown to be correlated with issues such as immune system damage and other injuries obtained from playing football in the national football leagues (NFL). This is increasing usage of marijuana in football academy schools are administering drug doping tests in an attempt to reduce the use of marijuana. The reason for this random doping test is that the claim that marijuana usage affects their performance (Collier, 2017) positively. It is therefore advisable that the enactments that enable the legalization of cannabis sativa to be incorporated to ensure the pains experienced by footballers and other athletes are reduced as a way of increasing their performance. "A survey of former NFL players found that 52% had used opioids during their playing days, and the rate of opioid use among retired players was triple that of the general population" (Collier, 2017).

Various constitutional amendments and acts regarding cannabis sativa and its implications on the society have been established to prevent doping cases in the athletics sector, which puts other athletes more powerful than the rest hence giving faulty outcomes (Campos, Yonamine & de Moraes Moreau, 2003). Implementation of such bills has a lot of effects on all the stakeholders since all the major attributes, both negative and positive about marijuana are highlighted so that the users bear absolute responsibility in the event of adverse effects on their health conditions. Collier (2017) further opined that legalization of marijuana would underpin and credit the medicinal purposes and also impact positively on society. Therefore, based on such implications and other evidence-based activities of this substance, it is clear that it is more useful and beneficial in the society than other drugs in its category (Campos, Yonamine & de Moraes Moreau, 2003). More athletes, from the statistics, opt to use this substance to acquire medicinal effects due to its natural state and essential active ingredients.

However, despite the growing amount of evidence from the studies, there needs to be more tests that are to be conducted. These studies, which have been conducted in controlled conditions to check the effectiveness of cannabis sativa, indicate that the substance is healthy for the human body, especially people in the sporting sector (Assi, 2020). The data obtained from the research indicates that there are sufficient informational and evidence-based parameters to make a conclusive decision on the kind of effect that marijuana usage has on the bodies and the human immune system of the athletes. The correlation of prolonged usage of such active ingredients in marijuana needs to be further studied as other substances can also cause symptoms that might project this substance a controversial medicinal item. The use of marijuana could be attributed due to other issues such as anxiety relief that the subject experiences. Therefore, marijuana is an important natural substance that has strong medicinal implications to the athletes and hence contributing positively to the development in contemporary society.

Based on the active ingredients on marijuana like cannabidiol, which are responsible for treatment purposes, I believe that this substance possesses a myriad of medicinal purposes that are essential to the user. Some of the regulations that are in place, such as the United States of America laws, also have an effect on how much marijuana can be used. Such regulatory and administrative bottlenecks from the United States of America's authorities should be lenient to the marijuana users as the substance is highly effective in the treatment of athletics complications such as stress, pains, anxiety, and pressure (Zeiger, Silvers, Fleegler, & Zeiger, 2019). Moreover, marijuana is important in the treatment of other health complications such as cancerous growths and other inflammatory infections that affects the performance and scorecards of most of the athletes if infected. There are limited sources of reliable information on the kinds of effects of marijuana usage and the population.

Through quantitative research, a study of college student-athletes who use marijuana has been conducted by various researchers to determine the implication of such a substance in their health and performance. The kinds of effects obtained from such research studies on the subject go far beyond that of the respiratory effects in the users. The effect of marijuana usage on college athletes positively affects their ability to practice and hence resulting in impressive sporting results. The doping issues, however, are another aspect that orients itself on the way of efficiency of this drug in the international athletics competition as most of the users tend to perform much higher than the non-substance users (Campos, Yonamine & de Moraes Moreau, 2003). However, it is theorized that this effect would be observed in the student who had a history of anxiety (Zeiger, Silvers, Fleegler, & Zeiger, 2019).

Finally, based on the importance of marijuana from the literature, it indicates all the underpinning features that make it removed from the banned substances. Through its active ingredients, which are beneficial for athletic and other disease treatment purposes, the legalization of cannabis sativa is a positive trend in the field of medicine. Hybridization of the chemical substances in this substance could be more important than the majority of the laboratory-made medicinal substances hence making it a useful substance. Therefore, the legalization of this substance (cannabis sativa) is a breakthrough in the various areas such as the health sector, athletics industry, and psychological field due to its ability to amass vast solutions to the common problems in those fields.

References

Assi, S. (2020). The NFL Should Stop Trying to Weed Out Marijuana: Why Medical Marijuana Remedies the League's Misuse of Pain Killers. Retrieved March 8, 2020, from https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/lawreview/vol5/iss1/3/

Campos, D., Yonamine, M., & de Moraes Moreau, R. (2003). Marijuana as Doping in Sports. Sports Medicine, 33(6), 395-399. https://link.springer.com/article/ 10.2165/00007256-200333060-00001 doi: 10.2165/00007256-200333060-00001

Collier, R. (2017, March 20). A place for pot in sports? CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal, 189(11), E448+. Retrieved from https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A486309963/SCIC? u=rowan&sid=SCIC&xid=8d59ca22

Zeiger, J., Silvers, W., Fleegler, E., & Zeiger, R. (2019). Cannabis use in active athletes: Behaviors related to subjective effects. PLOS ONE, 14(6), e0218998. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0218998 doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218998