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DEA Judge Francis Young - “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest
therapeutically active substances known to man.” Would you question the government if
it were trying to eradicate one of the most beneficial plants in existence? Medicinal
marijuana should be federally legalized by the United States government. Cannabis has
the potential to help millions of patients naturally with fewer, if any, long-term side
effects than some modern day prescription drugs. The history of marijuana is complicated
but it is clear that marijuana was made illegal for all the wrong reasons. Marijuana was
wrongly classified due to scare tactics and racism rampant in the country. Despite this,
people all over the world are finally realizing the benefits of the herb, and nobody can
Cannabis Sativa, more commonly known as marijuana, is a natural herb that can
be found in the wild almost anywhere on the planet. The dried flowers of the plant
commonly known as THC. Currently Marijuana is legalized for medicinal use in 13 U.S.
meaning it has no medicinal use, a high potential for abuse, and lack of accepted safe use.
However, it is not the menace that society believes it to be. In fact, recent studies have
shown that marijuana could be a beneficial herb. But marijuana is a highly addictive
drug, right? ‘Hard’ drugs such as cocaine, heroine, and methadone all affect the brain’s
reward system when they are taken. This leads to dependency, because the brain will do
whatever it takes to get ‘rewarded’, overriding what common sense warrants. Most
prescription drugs including opiate pain relievers such as morphine, and benzodiazepine
related drugs such as Xanax, have many negative side effects and are highly addicting.
Studies have shown that marijuana affects the brain differently than these hard drugs,
physiological link between the user and marijuana, but the same could be said about
chocolate and even browsing the Internet. If a heavy marijuana user quits the drug, he
will experience very mild withdrawal effects, if any at all. Although it’s never healthy to
breathe in smoke, the plant can also be ingested or vaporized, in which only the THC is
released. In all of its vast history, marijuana has been directly attributed to zero deaths
(Gerberding). If harmful, one would think there would be at least one fatal marijuana
instance, but there simply isn’t. It is practically impossible to smoke or even ingest a
The plant has been utilized for its medicinal properties for thousands of years.
Interestingly enough, cannabis has only been illegal for less than 1% of its use. For
example, it was used for medicinal purposes 4,000 years ago in ancient china, along with
Egypt and India. (BBCNews) Throughout the 1800’s, marijuana was a common medicine
used to treat pain and insomnia, and was used as the primary pain reliever until aspirin
was created. Marijuana became illegal in virtually all forms with the introduction of the
1937 Marihuana Tax Act. However, cannabis was not given fair scientific evaluation or
trial, it became illegal for virtually all non-existent reasons. One of the main anti-
cannabis leaders was Harry Anslinger. Harry was appointed as the first commissioner of
the Bureau of Narcotics. The bureau was an upcoming agency that could virtually re-
write the rulebook about drugs. Anslinger focused heavily on marijuana, relating the herb
to racism and violence. "There are 100,000 marijuana smokers in the United States, most of which are
Mexicans, Negroes, Filipinos and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana
use. This marijuana causes white women to search for sexual relations with negroes, entertainers, and any
others." – Harry Anslinger. From this point, Harry’s friend William Hearst helped spread
yellow journalism in the newspapers he owned. Here is an excerpt from the San
Francisco Examiner: "By the tons it is coming into this country -- the deadly, dreadful poison that
racks and tears not only the body, but the very heart and soul of every human being who once becomes a
slave to it in any of its cruel and devastating forms.... Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke
marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid
specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who
ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him...." America’s history of marijuana is
filled with racist and falsified claims, yellow journalism and scare tactics.
There are countless medicinal benefits that could come from the hemp plant. Two
of marijuana’s well-known effects are anti-nausea and increased appetite. These uses
alone could battle the effects of AIDS or post-chemotherapy patients trying to keep the
food down. Post-chemo patients have trouble eating because they experience nausea and
lack of appetite. However, with cannabis use, appetites increased as well as ability to
contain food. In Tennessee, a study was done that yielded very clear results; “…90.4%
success for smoked cannabis; 66.7% for oral THC.’ We found both marijuana smoking
also helps AIDS patients regain their appetites. It serves as an antispasmodic for epilepsy
pressure to treat glaucoma, and is effective in treating mood disorders such as depression,
medicine was shown to prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer’s (dailymail). These are
just a few of cannabis’ medicinal qualities, as more and more medical benefits are being
discovered.
What is one of the most prominent reasons that marijuana remains illegal as a
medicine today? It’s natural. Global pharmaceutical sales reached 602 billion dollars in
2005. (http://findarticles.com) In the 1930’s it was illegal to patent a plant, and marijuana
has been shown to be most effective in its natural form, meaning there’s little profit to be
made from marijuana. Cannabis is very easily produced, only needing dirt, water and
seeds to create an almost endless supply of medication. In 1992, the FDA licensed a drug
called Marinol in order to treat nausea of chemotherapy patients and increase appetites of
AIDS wasting syndrome patients (wikipedia). Marinol is a drug that was created to
mimic the properties of marijuana, synthetic THC in a pill. Now that it has been
synthesized as a drug, it can be sold and profit can be made. For 30 doses of marinol,
mimicking a plant that costs pennies to produce. Taken from the documentary The
Union: “This THC in marinol is exactly the same 21-carbon molecule that’s in herbal
marijuana… You can make synthetic THC in test tubes, it will have the same number of
atoms and same arrangement, but how in the test tube can you put the electron spins
together, the subatomic quirks and quarks if you like of that compound in the same way
that a biological enzyme system would put it together? It can’t happen” (The Union). So
now we have the government backing a medication that’s essentially worse than its
natural counterpart. How could the government have Cannabis listed as a Schedule I drug
with no known medical properties, and at the same time try to produce a synthetic version
of the natural plant? “You know they are trying to make marijuana into medicine,
because it IS medicine.” - Mark Emery
Along with of the medical benefits that THC has to offer, the cannabis plant as a
whole, if embraced, could greatly increase overall health of the world. There is a variety
of cannabis that is bred to have little to none of the psychoactive component THC, known
as hemp. Industrial hemp can be used for food, fuel, and textiles. If hemp is used for
biofuel, it would greatly increase the quality of the environment. Hemp can be grown in
virtually every corner of the world, so if it’s cultivated on a mass scale for biofuel, it
could be used to power most of our fuel needs. When hemp is grown, it releases oxygen
into the air, helping to offset the emissions put into the atmosphere from vehicles. If
hemp were cultivated as a paper pulp source, in a twenty-year period it would yield four
times the amount of paper in one acre than tree pulp (cannabistaxact.org). This could save
the majority of forests from being destroyed for paper pulp. "Cotton and soy, the two
hemp substitute crops, are characterized not only by their enormous demand for
pesticides, but also by the toxicity of the respective pesticides in use." (Bocsa) Hemp has
a natural insect resistance, and thus requires little to no pesticides, increasing overall
Cannabis Sativa has been used throughout history for medicinal purposes all over
the world. If the unites states government legalized medical marijuana on a federal level,
millions of peoples lives would improve greatly. They are prohibiting a natural medicine,
which seemingly only good could come. I hope in the future, people will begin to realize
that there is an asinine amount of negative propaganda surrounding this benign herb,
Gettman, Jon. “Marijuana and the Brain, Part II: The Tolerance Factor.” High Times
Jul 1995
Gerberding, Julie, "Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000," Journal of the
American Medical Association, March 10, 2004, 1238
Macrae, Fiona. "Cannabis 'could stop dementia in its tracks'" DailyMail. 19 Nov. 2008.
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1087544/cannabis-stop-dementia-
tracks.html>.
Hemp. <http://www.cannabistaxact.org/paper/>.