Legalizing Marijuana Research Paper

Substance use and abuse has always been a very complex issue that has been going on around the world for some time, however it now proposes more intricate questions about how the usage of certain drugs has evolved in medicine and in society. But there is one specific drug that people tend to be uncertain and cautious about even though it is the number one drug used today, Marijuana. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), “Marijuana refers to the dried leaves, flowers, stems, and seeds from the hemp plant, Cannabis sativa. The plant contains the mind-altering chemical delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and other related compounds” (1). Identified by the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Marijuana also known as THC

Due to this, one of the most common trepidations people have is that if the drug were to be legalized, it would find its way to be easily accessible to minors. In Colorado and Washington where marijuana is legal for medical and recreational use, the distribution of the drug is regulated by the supplier and is only sold to people who are twenty-one and older. As these rules and regulations apply, the law controls the dissemination of the drug. With the ability to purchase marijuana legally, people also fear that it will cause for crime rates to increase. In “Legalizing Medical Marijuana May Actually Reduce Crime” by Matt Ferner, he quotes Michael Elliot, executive director of the Marijuana Industry Group: “While this program is cumbersome for the small business owners in this industry, it is far better than choosing black market operators who use violence to dominate the sale of marijuana and prey on our children” (12). With Marijuana dispensaries controlling and being the ones to allocate the drugs to those who use, it deviates people resorting to buying from those selling in the streets who don’t always have the best intentions. As the debate of whether or not legalizing marijuana is a good idea, there are many pros as to why the legalization of marijuana would be a good

What is willfully ironic is that the use of medical marijuana or the ingredients in THC has already been proven to be beneficial to some people who have encountered certain illnesses such as muscle spasms, cancer patients, children with epilepsy, and more. Unfortunately, but still “have no use” in medicine. In addressing the hesitation of its motives, the NIDA mentions that “scientific study of the chemicals in marijuana, called cannabinoids, has led to two FDA-approved medications that contain cannabinoid chemicals in pill form…Because the marijuana plant contains chemicals that may help treat a range of illnesses or symptoms, many people argue that it should be legal for medical purposes” (2). There have been chemicals found in marijuana that exhibit beneficial factors to those who are in need of alternate medical remedies, but continue to take a back seat due to its classification as a drug. Because there hasn’t been large experiments to get any certain answers, in “Medical Marijuana and Epilepsy,” Joseph Sirven and Patricia Shafer stated that: “Individual reports of children with refractory (or intractable) epilepsy who have tried cannabis, usually with high ratios of cannabidiol to THC, have reported marked improvements in seizure frequency” (4).