Marijuana: is it the right medicine for you?

Marijuana
Is it the Drug They Say it is?
Marijuana also known as Cannabis but mostly referred to as weed is a
product of the hemp plant. Is it the dangerous drug they say it is? Why is it illegal? THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) is the main active ingredient in marijuana. Marijuana is also used medically and known as ‘Medical marijuana’ or ‘Medicinal marijuana’ its by using it or using its ingredients such as THC. Marijuana is one of the world’s most commonly used leisure drugs. This essay will examine marijuana legalization, side effects, and medical uses.

The use of marijuana was recorded five thousand years ago. It gained more attention in the last century with movements supporting marijuana legalization. Smoking is the most common method of taking marijuana in different types like rolling a joint (which is the way smokers often use) or through a pipe. However, it can also be eaten in various ways like mixing it with brownies or cakes. It is estimated that at least one person in fifteen have tried using it in the UK. Marijuana is mostly introduced to people by their peers, friends, siblings. Young users might also start smoking pot after watching some people smoking it on TV or songs about it. Most people that smoke weed smoke it for either having a good time or smoking it through pain. People that use marijuana in a young age are most likely to experiment other drugs too when they get older. In addition, When young people start using marijuana regularly, they often lose interest and motivation to do their homework because they usually don’t remember what they have learned when they are high. Stoping the youth from smoking at a very early age depends on their morales and the way their parents have raised them because sometimes kids or young people see a certain group or something on TV then go right away and try it. Another scary thing for the youth is trying to impress others by smoking or dealing to show that they are not kids which is a stage almost every young person goes through, it is the nature of life.

Marijuana has many side effect mostly short term such as sleepiness, dry mouth, increase in appetite. The long term effects is still not well known because the United States government states that it is harsher than tobacco so the chances of getting HIV or lung cancer will increase with smoking it. On the other hand, researchers from all over the world disagrees with the government stating that the chances of patients getting HIV with smoking pot is minimal unlike tobacco. Another studies showed that the chances of getting  HIV and lung cancer for marijuana smokers is even less than people who don’t smoke anything. The chances of cannabis smokers to get a heart attack

increase by triple in the first hour of smoking, because your heartbeat and pulse rate increase. Cannabis can also make sudden mood changes because false signals are sent to the brain while smoking. The drug also reduces the ability to do things that requires concentration and things like that such as driving a car and it also makes the smoker panic for no reason. The ways to stop the high is by eating, chocolate is really helpful and drinking water too.

Cannabis is not a miracle medicine for diseases, some patients feel relieved after using it. Nevertheless, some patients report achieving significant relieves while others claim that they didn’t gain any relief. Scientists claim that marijuana is the safest drug on the market, it is not addictive and the side effects are minimum yet it could be used in so many ways. Marijuana’s benefits doesn’t stop there, THC (Marijuana’s main ingredient) has been found to reduce lung cancer by fifty percent, significantly reducing the ability for the cancer to spread, says researchers in Harvard University. Breast cancer kills a lot of women yearly, researchers in the San Francisco lab are working to shrink that number using marijuana. Treating aggressive forms of cancer is very hard with a limited range of options.  Researchers at CPMCRI (California Pacific Medical Center research Institute) tested CBD which inhibits Id-1. Id-1 is the gene that makes the cancer spread and CBD stops that gene. Therefore, marijuana ingredients can stop cancer in a way or another. However, the researchers stated that they are not suggesting that breast cancer patients should smoke pot, it is unlikely that the effective concentration of CBD could be reached by smoking cannabis. Marijuana components are used to make medicines like Cannabis Indica. Many doctors believe that cannabis works perfect for a pain killer, appetite increaser, and it reduces nausea. Since medical marijuana has been legalized in California, many patients have said that marijuana is the only thing that helps achieve symptom relief. In some cases patients reported that marijuana helped them with their medication more than prescription drugs, which might have been helping, but not enough. Dr. Eidelman, a physician in California that supports marijuana and also a firm believer that cannabis is a great asset for treating people who suffer from cancer.

People who are against marijuana say that it is an addictive drug. However, several universities have studied the drug alongside alcohol, tobacco, cocaine, and heroin, the results indicated that marijuana was the least addictive between all of those in which tobacco and heroin were the most addictive. Cigarettes smokers have the need to smoke one after the other, which is really harsh on the lungs because it doesn’t have time to clean up. Tobacco kills about 5.4 million people each year, hundreds of thousands die yearly because of alcohol. Whereas marijuana has never been responsible of any death till now yet it is still illegal. People who are with legalizing marijuana states that the government is not legalizing marijuana because its a natural plant which anyone can grow at a cost of pennies so the government won’t profit from it because drug companies will lose. There is no money to be made out of a natural plant, if you can use a natural medicine that you can easily grow at your home you’re going to do that. Many people die from overdosing hard drugs like cocaine and heroin, but its virtually impossible to
die from overdosing on marijuana in which you have to consume 40,000 times the amount of THC required to intoxicate you. In other words, it requires 120,000 hits to kill you. You can overdose on marijuana, it is just not fatal it will only put you to sleep. It rarely happens when you smoke it, it happens more often when you eat it. You can overdose on water but you cannot overdose on marijuana so it is not dangerous. Pot smokers report less depression than others, basically when you are depressed you need something to get everything out of your mind and smoking pot is the easiest way to do it. A lot of patients suffer from migraines which the patients states that it makes them want to kill themselves, marijuana is the safest and also the most beneficial thing to use instead of killing yourself.

Legality doesn’t necessarily decides whats good and whats bad. Slavery was once legal at some point and it still is in some parts of Africa. The use of cannabis is illegal in most parts of the world but using it medically is legal in some countries like Canada, Netherlands, Spain and some parts of the United States. Marijuana has a large history in the United States, in the 17th century the government encouraged the production of hemp for the production of sails, rope, and clothing. Cannabis sativa is usually used to produce hemp. In the twentieth century, most countries had a second about it being legal and trying to take action in making it illegal. Cannabis was first made illegal in the United States in 1937, but then they allowed it to be used medically in some parts like California. A research done by Scripps Research Institute in California indicates that THC prevents acetylcholinesterase which is the enzyme that sets Alzheimer’s disease formation. Investigators at Columbia University concluded that smoking marijuana has a clear medical effect on HIV-positive patients. THC also helps to stimulate appetite and relieve nausea in AID and cancer patients. The hemp plant is a valuable plant  that was used for a long time that can be tracked back to 8000 BC in Chine and the middle east. The plant can be used to make a lot of things with better quality and much cheaper like body lotions and clothing.

Many people believe that the legalization of marijuana would lead to health issues and problems, such as the use of harder drugs. The US government stated that ‘Marijuana is a gateway drug’ if you smoke pot you will most likely turn to harder drugs, because most people who are using hard drugs have smoked cannabis in their past. First of all, as you all know marijuana is the most commonly used illegal drug, people who use Heroin (another hard drug) are very likely to have used marijuana but it is really a matter of morals, if you don’t have a problem injecting yourself with heroin, what stops you from smoking cannabis? A hard drug user won’t have a problem using a soft drug. Marijuana stays in your body for almost a month, while alcohol stays for about 48 hours, when your body gets rid of something it does it for a reason. Marijuana being illegal has some negative effects like meeting new and different types of dealers who are most likely to sell other drugs like cocaine which might make soft drug users turn to hard drugs. The black market is the only place you can get cannabis from in most countries thats why legalizing it could decrease the number of hard drug users. People should have the right to use cannabis if they want to and they are going to do it in one way or another, but doing it legally is safer and cheaper for everybody. Legalizing it would even decrease smoking it for the youth, because when it is sold in a shop you would have to be 18 and older whereas in the black market it doesn’t matter how old you are because drug dealers want to make as much money as possible. Many people believe that ‘marijuana lowers intelligence’ in fact many intelligent members smoke or used to smoke. For example, the United States president Barak Obama when he said “when I was a kid I inhaled”, John F. Kennedy also used to smoke for hi back pain, and so as George W. Bush. Michael Phillips the one who people consider the best Olympic swimmer also smoked.

In conclusion, people have used marijuana for about five thousand years and will continue using it for leisure or medical purposes. Cannabis has many medical uses and less side effects than other legal drugs. Legalizing marijuana is better and would solve a lot of issues, it might have some negative effects but in the end every step to success leave something negative with it.

Bibliography

Bello, J (1997). The Benefits of Marijuana. The United States: Joan Bello

Clements, K & Zhao, X (2009). Economics and Marijuana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, New York

Donnellan, C (2004). The Cannabis Debate. Cambridge: Independence
Eidelman, W. (Unknown). Medical Marijuana. Available: http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/. Last accessed 10 Aug 2010.

Fox, S (2009). Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?. United States: Chelsea Green Publishing Company

Morgan, K (2010). Legalizing Marijuana. United States: Abdo Pub Co

NIDA. (Unknown). Marijuana. Available: http://www.nida.nih.gov/infofacts/marijuana.html. Last accessed 26 Jul 2010.

Zimmerman, B (1998). Is Marijuana The Right Medicine For You?. USA: Keats Publishing Inc.

Torture and Punishment

Torture can be defined in many ways, so it is important to determine what is torture and what are the forms of it? Torture is the act of inflicting force on someone in order to get something in return, sometimes it could be just a way of teasing, it also could be imposed in the form of psychological power, causing just psychiatric damage. Now the type of torture that needs to be avoided are the ones that takes place just because someone has an opportunity to do so, this will normally result from the lack of proper supervision. An exception can be made in exceptional circumstances like wars and political issues in general where torture is the last resort and inevitable. The concept of torture has proven to be used wrongly in some places like in Guantanamo Bay for example. Torture is prohibited under domestic laws and international law in most countries. Around 81 governments practice torture, which was estimated by Amnesty International. Torture has been mostly used as a method of effecting political re-education. In the 21st century, torture is considered to be a violation of human rights, and it is not acceptable by Article 5 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Torturing an innocent is inhuman, only the ones who deserve the torture should be tortured.

Contempt is normally built on racial, origins, religious… Basis. Even if we claim that the highest level of democracy have been reached, can we deny the fact that discrimination still exists to some extent? That can be proven simply by going through visa applications or by taking a look of how people from different racial colors are treated at airports. There is no way that you can even avoid noticing the huge difference in treatment between Arabs and Europeans for example. Of course it could be argued that it’s because of “safety” and “national security”, but how is it being practiced really? Of course the level of irrationality has been decreased in the last couple of years, but the image of the Arabs in the other communities are full of misconceptions as a result.

What about the Importance of punishment to maintain public discipline and safety? Isn’t reasonable to put some fear from disobeying the law in the community? Isn’t for there own good? I can’t even imagine how people could interact safely when there is absolutely no punishment could be imposed from any act. Punishments aren’t near as harsh as they used to be back in medieval days.Punishment for a crime needs to be used if a crime was committed, for example, if the charge for murder was only a $300 fine, no potential criminal would think twice about it. Now someone could argue that a person may hesitate from doing crimes because of faith and religious believe or even just because that particular person is civilized, and this is obviously is not a solution, as uneducated people won’t have a problem committing a crime, same goes for non-believers. I am not saying that hard punishments is a good thing, I am saying that if we don’t act right things could go wrong. Punishments have some positive effects like teaching a lesson. Every person in this world makes mistakes, no one is perfect. Therefore, in order to have lack of mistakes, you have to scare the public so that criminals or people who are thinking about committing a crime give a second thought before doing what he planned, it gives warnings. Punishments differ from each other. In other words, the punishment should be determined based on what the person did, a good punishment is required based on the situation. Nowadays, we have all sorts of crimes happening, and good punishments could hold the key into decreasing the number of crimes being committed daily.