Medical Marijuana paper

Marijuana and its medical benefits have been a controversial topic for years. Medical marijuana can help cure most diseases, but other people believe that marijuana has no medical benefits and should remain illegal. I believe that medical marijuana should be legalized on the state and federal level because it’s a medicine that helps people with debilitating diseases, there are many ways to consume marijuana, keeps good people from going to jail, and if taxed would add massive amounts of revenue back in the our economy.This medicine has helped with the treatment of “muscle spasms caused by multiple sclerosis, nausea from cancer chemotherapy, poor appetite and weight loss caused by chronic illness, such as HIV, or nerve pain, and seizure disorders”. These illnesses can cause someone’s way of life to be changed to adapt to them.

With medical marijuana people find that they can overcome these challenges and get back to their daily lives as they knew them before. No medicine comes without some type of side effects.Marijuana’s side effects can vary from “dizziness to drowsiness, short-term memory loss, and even sometimes severe anxiety”. To prevent underage use anytime they have made it so that kids under 18 have to have a care giver to give them their medicine. An example of the medical benefits of marijuana is that of “Shona Banda who has suffered from Crohn’s Disease for eight years.

She was bedridden and could only walk with a cane until she began to treat herself with cannabis oil and is now back to normal living”.This story shows how someone can overcome their debilitation and get back to a regular living style. Medical marijuana can be consumed in many different ways, for example it can be made into a butter or oil that can be infused into cookies, brownies, candies, or any baked goods that require a butter or oil base. The reason for using butter or oil is that the active ingredients in the marijuana bond with the fatty molecules unlike water that has no fat to it. Next marijuana can be turned into hash oil (also known as BHO) using a solvent such as butane or pure drinking alcohol such as Everclear.

There is a very in depth process that goes into making this type of product making it more expensive than other marijuana products. This can be consumed using an oil rig that heats the BHO to the vaporization point which prevents from the destruction of any of the active chemicals in the product. With BHO the effects are felt almost instantly providing relief to patients when needed. Marijuana can also be vaporized in a vaporizer which again prevents the destruction of the active chemicals by keeping the marijuana under the combustion point. “Marijuana can also be made into tinctures and tonics.They can be applied to the skin, consumed directly, or added to food.

These tinctures take as long as edibles to provide relief but last longer than other forms of consumption”. All of these ways of consumption are healthy for the user and can reduce cancer cells over time. If none of these ways appeal to the patient then they can always smoke there medicine through a pipe, bong, joint, or whatever they are comfortable using. “In 1988, the DEA's Administrative Law Judge, Francis Young, concluded: "In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume” .Why are we still persecuting medical patients for consuming a drug that has less deaths associated with it than some foods we eat? This has been the argument for years and yet every week it continues that medical dispensaries get busted by the DEA. These owners have the right to own a dispensary in their state due to state laws.

Yet these businesses that are busted are either forced to go to jail or pay outrageous fines. Due to marijuana being a schedule I drug along with heroin, peyote, and LSD hinders studies that would allow scientist to prove that marijuana has medical benefit and should become a schedule II or even III drug.With these schedules this also means that anybody in Washington and Colorado where marijuana has been legalized could still be busted by the federal government. I feel that these people are trying to help others and give them the medicine that they need shouldn’t have to face jail time or fines because they are doing better for the world and really are trying to help other people, but when their dispensaries are closed this hurts the people that they were helping. “It has been said that if marijuana becomes legal that within the first year the US would save 13.

7 billion dollars”.If this is the estimated savings if marijuana is fully legalized then imagine how much would be saved if only medical marijuana was legalized even if medical marijuana counted for only three percent of this, than that would still be 411 million dollars that the US would be saving a year. “That would amount to 1. 31 dollars per person in the US” . “This savings is coming from a lesser need of law enforcement, the taxation of the medicine, and the people that are purchasing the product”.

Also thousands of jobs would be created in a time that we need jobs in our economy.Marijuana should be legalized for medical purposes on the state and federal level in the United States. This could be solved with the arguments of it’s a medicine that helps people make it through the day, there are many ways to consume it, keeps good people from going to jail, and if taxed would add revenue back in to our economy. Logically the consumption of marijuana for medical uses would have more positive outcomes for everyone not just people using it, but you have to make the decision for yourself if medical marijuana is a good thing or not.