Should Marijuana Be Legal Since Alcohol Is and Why Should It Remain Illegal While Alcohol Is Legal - Essay Sample

Introduction

Marijuana is a drug that is ingested or smoked for its euphoric effects. It is also used for medicinal purposes, industrial use and as a recreational drug. Marijuana is also called cannabis, weed, pot or joint and is a product of hemp or cannabis sativa, a tall annual herb native to Asia. Marijuana is the most commonly abused illegal drug around the world and is abused by younger people aged twelve years to the older generation. Drugs and substance abuse is illegal around the globe and marijuana is classified as a drug in the majority of countries around the world. Currently, some countries and most of the states in the US have enacted laws that legalize the use of medicinal and recreational marijuana. Marijuana and alcohol have been classified as gateway drugs that lead to other harder drugs.

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Many debates have been conducted on whether marijuana should be legalized with unusual amounts of controversial research. Many perspectives to take account arise from such debates and always come down to personal motives of the debater. Whether the argument is political, medical or economical perspective, it all points to whether the federal government should be our dictators or we should be responsible for our actions (Hall and Wayne 35 ).Smoking, tobacco or marijuana, is generally a bad and dirty habit that leads to early deaths despite people who smoke marijuana being cheered and seen as cool. These marijuana smokers are typically seen as unmotivated, degenerate and usually smelly. There are certainly financial constraints and human cost in keeping marijuana illegal as witnessed in prisons. Marijuana dealers and smokers alike are arrested when caught and put behind bars. Keeping them behind bars is expensive. It is projected that the cost would be even more significant if marijuana is not handled well.

Marijuana is incredibly addictive for some people. It is estimated that marijuana is only roughly addictive to nine percent of people who smoke it. Marijuana addiction is so profound such that addicts can go for many years without it before they start to experience difficulty but eventually the high starts wearing off. At this point, they tend to smoke more marijuana to get the upper back, and that is when they descend to difficulties and finally to addiction. Due to its extreme dependence, marijuana is the most challenging drug to give up compared to other drugs like alcohol and cocaine. Marijuana is very terrible for mental health. A recent study at Northwestern University has found that marijuana users have a poor memory and an abnormal structure of the brain. The study has found out that chronic marijuana abuse might lead to brain changes that resemble schizophrenia (Turnbull, David and Hodge 283). The study also concluded that the younger a person abuses marijuana, the worse the effects are. Heavy marijuana use, especially in adolescents, causes persistent impairments in neurocognitive performance, lowers IQ, difficulty concentrating and impairs driving and reaction time. Marijuana use is associated with increased rates of anxiety, psychotic thought disorders and mood swings.

Marijuana has been found to be hazardous and dreadful for one's physical health. Doctors and oncologists persistently reject the idea of prescribing marijuana for smoking. Crude cannabis contains chemicals exceeding 400 with THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, being the main active ingredient. Marijuana abuse has been found to be even more toxic than cigarette smoking. Regular smokers are faced with devastating lung problems earlier on compared to cigarette smokers. Marijuana smoking by pregnant women is horrible and disastrous for the babies who are later born with birth defects, mental abnormalities and very increased risk of leukemia. Generally, marijuana abuse causes temporary sterility in both men and women smokers. The multiple toxic chemicals found in marijuana give higher risk for cancer, respiratory damage and heart attack.

Marijuana devastates many lives of people especially the young ones. Many movies portray marijuana smokers as harmless, fun-loving people who spent most of their time giggling and eating but leave out the parts where these people are flunking out of school, losing their jobs and loved ones and frustrated because they cannot concentrate and focus with their lives. These movies have a tremendous negative influence on the society, especially among teens. Due to marijuana smoking, critical skills related to attention, memory, and learning are severely diminished. Students who abuse marijuana usually get lower grades and are less likely to get into college. These students do not have similar abilities to remember and organize information compared to those who do not use substances like marijuana.

Another dangerous effect of marijuana is the slowing down or weakening of reflexes of the user. If an intoxicated marijuana driver were driving and is faced by a foreign object on the road, they would endanger their lives and of many, because it would be too late for them to realize and comprehend the danger ahead. That would result in a fatal accident with loss of lives. Glaucoma has been reported as the main reason for smoking medicinal marijuana. There is no scientific proof that marijuana prevents progression of visual loss (Hall and Weier 607). Marijuana, alcohol and other substances have been reported to lower intraocular eye pressure. Medication must be specific to the individual to prevent or cure eye damage. Apart from so many side effects of abusing marijuana, its dosage cannot be precise hence resulting in overdosing the drug.

Smoking marijuana has not been accepted as a medical treatment or an alternative to any medical treatment of any sort for any illness. None of the American health organizations has approved marijuana as a medicine. These organizations have continuously rejected marijuana as medicine. Doctors do not prescribe marijuana to their patients because they advise on the use of the best drug possible. Although tetrahydrocannabinol, THC, synthetic marijuana and standardized marijuana are available, in their purest form for a prescription, doctors prescribe them as the last alternative because there are better medicines available. There are more worrying reasons that regular marijuana smoking could significantly impact a child's life. Marijuana may cause a motivational syndrome while adolescents who abuse it are less likely to have learned how to deal with their emotions, disappointments and work through difficult and challenging times in their relationships. Longtime marijuana users show poorer outcomes on a range of life satisfaction and achievement measures than non-users (Ammerman and Seth 785).

Medical marijuana has been used as a way of opening opportunities for the use and trafficking of recreational marijuana. Marijuana losses its pain relieving abilities for the majority when the smoking idea is taken away. A marijuana drug is already available for pain relieving and other medical conditions but without getting the user high. The pain-relieving marijuana ingredient has been available by prescription for a long time, and the truth is, there are much better and safer drugs for relieving pain. Many arguments are that marijuana is a gateway drug to opioids and other highly dangerous drugs but fail to acknowledge that the illegal purchase of marijuana exposes users to dealers who push and suggest hard drugs (Donoghue and Kathleen 64). Considering the popularity of marijuana around the world, the abuse of more dangerous hard drugs could decrease if marijuana were to be regulated or purchased at stores instead of the streets where hard drugs like cocaine and heroin are sold.

The other important reason for regulating marijuana is, there would be the potential of curbing adulterated black market marijuana and its substitution of even more dangerous synthetic compounds. Natural marijuana poses little danger compared to synthetic cannabinoids, legal or not. In 1937, the Federal Bureau, America, pushed through laws banning growth, trade, and consumption of all forms of marijuana including the commercially useful natural hemp plant. The ban was based on corrupt science and made up stories of violence perpetrated under the influence of marijuana. The madness of marijuana can be attributed to those who were after criminalizing the drug immediately after the failure of prohibition of alcohol.

Marijuana abuse or smoking is more widely practiced today compared to the time it was prohibited (Dioun, Cyrus and Haveman 50). Cannabis sativa was domesticated in the distant past and has been cultivated ever since. The ban or prohibition has dramatically increased illegal activities and violence. Otherwise, right law-abiding citizen users have become criminals while criminals get rich through the untaxed and highly lucrative illicit drug industry. This problem can be fixed through control of marijuana and governments regulate the trade as it is done with alcohol and tobacco; monitoring production process, controlling the business and where it is sold and taxing all production and consumption. The government should also channel its resources from punishment to prevention and education especially on the younger generation.

Marijuana has been used by the Chinese throughout history with the earliest evidence being the document attributed to Shennung Ts'ao King, Emperor Shen Nung who lived around 2,800BCE. Within its volumes, there is a section with a vast explanation explaining the preparation and purpose of the herb where they used every part of the plant but never smoked it. The flowers of the cannabis were used to regulate menstrual disorders and treat open wounds, while the seeds were prescribed for post-partum complications, treatment of aconite poisoning, constipation and persistent vomiting. The section also warned that excessive use of the herb would cause hallucinations and huge effect.

Several important studies and statistics have been conducted and reported that large amounts of money are needed annually to keep up with marijuana misconducts while instead, they could tax the marijuana trade. Marijuana would save the budgetary expenditure towards the criminal justice enforcement and also yield tax revenue. The abuse of marijuana diminishes considerably compared to the legal fatal and highly addictive pharmaceuticals like oxycodone or ketamine which are readily available and abused recreationally. These pharmaceuticals cause many disastrous long and short-term effects and are lethal in long-term use. That simple fact strongly suggests that the natural taxation of those pharmaceuticals has made them legal.

Conclusion

Considering all the facts above, whether marijuana, medical or recreational, should be legalized or not, several medical issues can be solved and a lot of money can be availed and channeled towards the national debt.

Works Cited

Hall, Wayne. "What has research over the past two decades revealed about the adverse health effects of recreational cannabis use?." Addiction 110.1 (2015): 19-35.

Donoghue, Kathleen J. "Perceived harms and benefits of parental cannabis use, and parents' reports regarding harm-reduction strategies." (2015).

Turnbull, David, and James G. Hodge Jr. "Driving under the influence of marijuana laws and the public's health: public health and the law." The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 45.2 (2017): 280-283.

Hall, W., and M. Weier. "Assessing the public health impacts of legalizing recreational cannabis use in the USA." Clinical pharmacology & therapeutics 97.6 (2015): 607-615.

Ammerman, Seth, et al. "The impact of marijuana policies on youth: clinical, research, and legal update." Pediatrics 135.3 (2015): e769-e785.

Dioun, Cyrus, and Heather A. Haveman. "The Price of Ma...