Is The Proliferation of Marijuana for Medical Use a Blessing or a Danger?

Ever since the Vietnam War, there has been a movement to use marijuana for control of pain. This has resulted over the decades in a proliferation of the use of marijuana. There have been 14 states that have passed laws allowing marijuana use for medicinal purposes. As a result of the proliferation of the use of marijuana for medical use the legal enforcement of the substance has understandably faltered.

The states that have approved the use of marijuana are Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

There are conditions that are a uniquely good "fit" for marijuana. Fibromyalgia is a generalized non-specific pain and aching that typically medications will not soothe. However the overall relaxing effect of marijuana will do exactly that. In addition there is a natural tendency to be less anxious, and everyone knows anxiety causes pain.

I have fibromyalgia but have opted to take medication, actually narcotics. For one reason I live in Illinois, and marijuana is not legal.

However, I imagine even if it were legal I probably still wouldn't because I would have a problem just with my personal beliefs.

On the other hands I have two friends who opted to use marijuana, and I think it is only fair to say that they used marijuana historically back in the 1960s and 1970s and then went to Vietnam.

In their case, they could have tried to go to an adjoining state to get marijuana but they moved to another state where marijuana is legal.

I take Oxycodone, which is Percocet. I take a fair dose, and I could definitely get "hooked." Narcotics cause patients to become dependent. They can cause kidney damage. Yet I cannot consider them as dangerous as marijuana.

I was in Vietnam, and everyone got drunk from alcohol everyday or got high from marijuana everyday; marijuana was easy to get. Many more soldiers used marijuana.

The problem with marijuana, at least from what I saw, was that soldiers lost their perspective and their inhibitions. I saw one soldier give himself what could have been a fatal dose of heroin.

I believe that marijuana is a bigger threat than prescription medications and even alcohol.

The biggest threat I see is the control of marijuana.

There is a street on a major hill in our city that has a great deal of overgrowth. Marijuana grows on the hill, and most everyone knows about it. They don't touch it for fear it is a trap. However more likely there is a person that plants it and then "harvests" it. After all, doing it in the open is the safest method. The very nature of the "open" is protection to the person who grows it.

That illustrates the major problem as I see it. People who use marijuana often grow marijuana. There is no effective control on the overuse of narcotics so how can we expect there to be a good control when patients are growing their own? They can also go into selling the product.

The only way I can see this working is for there to be farms that control production and further controls to the patients.

We frown on people making their own drugs and it is for a reason; people will kill themselves.

Until the manufacture of marijuana is effectively monitored it cannot be considered an effective medication.

As an aside I have linked to a site that advises how to grow marijuana. Note the position that no problem can occur but that arrests are continuing?! Don't get involved. Think of the problems thousands and thousands of growers will cause.

References:

http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/viewresource.asp?resourceID=000881

Personal Experience

http://www.1stmarijuanagrowerspage.com/growing-marijuana-7.html