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Marijuana (cannabis) is a drug widely used for medical purposes in America. Sill, marijuana is prohibited on the state level which creates problems for medical staff and patients. Since 1937 marijuana has been listed separately under the federal narcotic control laws, and its illegal possession or distribution is subject to the same severe penalties as are now prescribed for violations of the narcotic laws (Belio 32).
It must be admitted that at the time of the passage of these laws, histories from some, but not all, heroin users indicated that the use of marijuana had preceded the use of heroin. In spite of the once-heated interchanges among members of the medical profession and between the medical profession and law enforcement officers, there seems to be a growing agreement within the medical community.
Marijuana should be legalized because it allows to relief some types of pain including sclerosis, cancer and AIDS. Also, Marijuana is used, not only for a variety of purely physical ailments, but as a treatment for psychological problems as well. In the 1950s recommended uses for marijuana included the treatment of gout, rheumatism, tetanus, opiate withdrawal symptoms, alcohol withdrawal, loss of appetite, convulsions, depression, delirium tremens, insanity, and asthma (Medical Marijuana, 2007).
In fact, marijuana is officially recognized as a medicine in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia and could be prescribed by doctors for a variety of ailments until 1937 when Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act. Legal status of marijuana will help patients to avoid other narcotics and relief pain. Its history suggests that it was used on a limited basis during the Civil War for the treatment of diarrhea and dysentery among.
When the drug is taken by inhalation of its smoke, effects occur within a few minutes and the duration of effect is relatively short; after ingestion, usually of the more purified resin, ½ to 1 hour may elapse before onset of effect, and the influence may persist for 3 to 5 hours (Belio 31). “Medical marijuana” should be subjected to the same scientific scrutiny as any drug proposed for use in medical therapy, rather than made legal for medical use by popular will” (Cohen 19).
There are no lasting ill effects from the acute use of marijuana and no fatalities have ever been reported. On smoking the drug, there is usually an increase in pulse rate, a slight rise in blood pressure, and conjunctival vascular congestion (Nadelmann, 1990). A marked increase in appetite (especially for sweets) and hunger are said to be characteristic. “There are really no other medications that have the same mechanisms of action as marijuana. Dronabinol (Marinol) is available by prescription in capsules, but has the distinct disadvantage of containing only synthetic delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) which is only one of many therapeutically beneficial cannabinoids in the natural plant” (Medical Marijuana 2007).
Legal status of marijuana will help doctors to avoid criminal responsibility. Despite the different legal approaches towards marijuana, a common trend can be seen across the America in the implementation of lesser sanctions for cases of use and possession of small quantities of cannabis for personal use without aggravating circumstances. Fines, cautions, probation, exemption from punishment and counseling are favored by most justice systems (Kreit 1787). It is important to keep in mind that cannabis policies at all levels of government could affect the prevalence of cannabis use and the related social consequences (Belio 35).
Legal status of medical marijuana will benefit the government and allows to collect taxes, control black market and illegal operations. Crop production uncertainties are just one perturbing factor in gauging the amount of illegal drugs being produced. The alkaloid content of any given precursor plant is not a given; it varies according to cultivation practices, climatic conditions and microzones, plant subspecies, and harvesting practices.
One must make estimates about that content. In the case of coca leaves, the cocaine content is known to vary widely, from about 0.25 percent to 1.5 percent, thereby throwing a large “wild card” into estimates of actual cocaine derived from the estimated crop production, itself subject to numerous assumptions (Belio 39). Moreover, the leaves, whatever their recoverable alkaloid content at the time of picking, quickly (within a matter of days) lose much of their potency.
Any delay in processing the leaves (which might arise, for example, if a successful trafficker interdiction program happens to be underway) can therefore add additional uncertainties to the production figures. One of the ways in which cannabis policy has an effect on non-users is through tax money (Kreit 1787). For various countries, estimates are made on the basis of total law enforcement costs and the share of enforcing cannabis laws in the total.
In contrast, illegal status of medical marijuana becomes a heavy burden for police including high costs and workload. The authors make rough estimates of the involved costs on the basis of police workload, number of drug offences, average time to carry out and administer an arrest, etc. They estimate the total costs of a single case on the basis of: the stop and search, the arrest, conveying back to the station, booking in, repeat search, placing the arrestee in a cell, compiling files and taking photographs, DNA and fingerprints (Kreit 1787).
Making medical marijuana use and trade illegal gives way to a black market. It has been suggested that this black market will lead to more associated crime such as physical violence (i.e. violence caused by illegal trade, not by use of the drug it self).
While this is the case for the cocaine and heroin market, the cannabis market is not associated with violence. For example, whereas ethnographic studies in New York showed that cannabis dealers dominated the parks and streets in the early 1990s, this market did not result in many violent conflicts (The War on Drugs 1537) This is indicated by the fact that only 1.4% of all drug-related homicides were related to cannabis. In recent decades the cannabis trade went more indoors, leading to less public nuisance constitute approximately 20% of cannabis users, they accounted for 58% of cannabis offenders sentenced under federal law (Belio 37).
Legal status of medical marijuana will benefit patents and ensure high quality of the drug. While whole cannabis preparations are unstable, vary greatly in strength, are insoluble in water, and have an onset of action which is slower than that of other drugs, they have the advantage over other analgesics, hypnotics, and sedatives in that they do not lead to the development of either physical dependence or tolerance, they have extraordinarily low toxicity, and lead to no disturbance of vegetative functions.
Furthermore, from what we know about other classes of drugs, it is altogether possible that when new congeners of the various cannabinol derivatives are developed, if indeed some have not already been, many or all of these problems will be overcome. Equally likely is the possibility that medical utilities already known will be enhanced and new ones discovered (Drug Policy Research Center 2002).
It is possible to reject these arguments stating that medical marijuana will create certain problem for society and the state. The main problem is that marijuana policy does not only affect marijuana users, but also the rest of society. Criminalizing marijuana use on the one hand can lead to higher costs of law enforcement and a black market, while decriminalizing could lead to public disturbance caused by unwanted marijuana use in public.
Within the scope of the current research, we do not study all consequences of marijuana policy for society as a whole. Societal costs due to the use of marijuana itself, such as health care costs or traffic accidents, are outside the scope of the research (Belio 32). As a drug, marijuana had several limitations. The potency of commercially available marijuana varied greatly and the effects of the drug. seemed to vary considerably from patient to patient. In addition, since it was not soluble in water, it could not be given by injection (Drug Policy Research Center 2002). These problems, combined with the fact that some patients had adverse effects from high doses, prevented marijuana from becoming a widely used medicine.
In sum, legal status of medical marijuana will benefit the state, medical staff and patients. Any notion of coherent implementation of policy at the local level is optimistic. Experiencing the criminal justice system has negative consequences for cannabis users beyond the correction of drug taking behavior. Criminal records and other sanctions reach beyond the actual penalties themselves into almost every aspect of the user’s life, typically in a negative way. Thus, legal status of medical marijuana will bring additional resources to the state budget and protect medical staff from criminal responsibility.
Works Cited
Belio, J. The Benefits of Marijuana: Physical, Psychological & Spiritual. Lifeservices Press; 3nd Rev. edition, 2007.
Cohen, P. J. Medical Marijuana, Compassionate Use, and Public Policy: Expert Opinion or Vox Populi? The Hastings Center Report, 36 (1), 2006: 19.
Drug Policy Research Center, 2002. Web.
Kreit, A. The Future of Medical Marijuana: Should the States Grow Their Own? University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 151 (1), 2003: 1787.
Medical Marijuana. 2007. Web.
Nadelmann, E, “Should Some Illegal Drugs Be Legalized?” Issues in Science and Technology. 6, 1990: 43-46. Web.
The War on Drugs: Fighting Crime or Wasting Time? American Criminal Law Review, 2001, 38, p. 1537.
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