Medical Cannabis

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

seem to find any proof to back up the government’s claims.

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

contain the psychoactive and therapeutic chemical Delta 9- tetrahydrocannabinol, more

commonly known as THC. Currently Marijuana is legalized for medicinal use in 13 U.S.

States. However, according to the federal government, marijuana is a schedule 1 drug

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,

leading to tolerance but not to dependence. (Gettman). There could become a

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

deadly amount of marijuana. So why is it illegal?

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

and THC capsules to be effective antiemetics…’”(wikipedia). Cannabis as an antiemetic

also helps AIDS patients regain their appetites. It serves as an antispasmodic for epilepsy

and multiple sclerosis; as a bronchodilator it is beneficial for asthma, it reduces eye

pressure to treat glaucoma, and is effective in treating mood disorders such as depression,

ADD, ADHD, OCD, and bipolar disorder. (wikipedia) Recently, a marijuana-based

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,

10mg a piece, it costs around $700 (pharmacychecker.com). Remember, this is

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

health of farmland and the ecosystem as a whole.

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,

formed from greed and hatred.

 Works Cited

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

“Medical cannabis.” Wikipedia. 2008. Wikipedia.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_marijuanaEarly_studies_on_efficacy>

Bocsa, Ivan. The Cultivation of Hemp. 98: Hemptech

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/>.

Global Pharmaceutical Market Grew 7 Percent. Mar. 2006. IMS Health.

<http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5559/is_200603/ai_n22511984>.

"History of Cannabis." BBC News. BBC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/1632726.stm

The Union. Prod. Adam Scorgie. 2007.