Marijuana: Why Should it Be Legalized?

Drug addiction is one of society's biggest problems and it is rampant among teenagers and young adults and one of the most abused drugs is marijuana. Cannabis sativa or marijuana usually grows throughout tropical and temperate climates and then plant's stems, leaves, flowers, and seeds are then dried. What attracts to most users is the mind altering effect these parts produce which is addictive to some extent. It is usually smoked as cigarette, or in a pipe. It is also smoked in blunts, in which cigars will be emptied of tobacco and refill with marijuana or sometimes it is combined with another drug. It can also be brewed as tea or mixed in food. Hashis is a more concentrated, resinous form which is sticky black liquid, hash oil. The smoke of marijuana has a distinctive and pungent smell, usually sweet-and-sour. Some popular street names of marijuana are pot, weed, grass, herb, hash, ganja, and widow.

Composition

Cannabis sativa L is annual plant with male and female flowers developing on different plants. The hemp can be divided into fiber and drug types depending on the THC and CBD content. The marijuana is rich in THC or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol. THC is created by nature when a plant-produced precursor, loses a carboxyl group due to heat and becomes THC. This is the natural defense of a cannabis plant against disease and predators. The Delta-9-THC is the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana but varies on particular plant it is either THC or cannabidiol is the most abundant in cannabinoid in marijuana. Delta-8-THC and Delta-9-THC are the compounds in marijuana that gives all the psychoactive effects. However, since Delta-9-THC is much more abundant than Delta-8-THC, the psychoactivity is attributed to largely to the effect of Delta-9-THC.

Scientists believed that THC affects your health and social behavior. THC affects the processes in the brain such as your memory, thought, pleasure, sensory, concentration, time perception and coordinated movement. The marijuana will cause loss of coordination, distorted perception, difficulty in thinking and problem solving, problems with memory and learning and increased heart rate. Abusing marijuana increases the risk of heart attack.

Benefits of Marijuana

The mechanism of action of marijuana is that attachment of THC and other cannabinoids to two types of receptors occurs once marijuana is smoked or ingested. One of these receptors is the CB1 which is present in the brain particularly in areas that have control over memory, movement, and vomiting. For this reason, balance and coordination and short term memory and learning are affected thus marijuana can be helpful in the treatment of nausea, loss of appetite, and pain. Moreover, CB2 receptor is primarily located in the immune system specifically, the lymph nodes and spleen. Although there is no exact explanation of its function but it is considered as a brake thus suppressing the immune system. On the other hand, after several minutes of smoking marijuana, its peak level is reached and this will last up to 1 hour and 30 minutes. Meanwhile, ingestion of marijuana utilizes food as this can hamper from reaching peak levels in the body and its effect will last longer in the body. In fact, dronabinol prescription, has potent effects after 30 minutes and its mechanism of appetite stimulation will last for more than 24 hours.

Meanwhile, medical professionals believe that marijuana is a very effective drug that relieve nausea, vomiting, spasticity, certain types of pain, appetite loss, other symptoms caused by such illnesses like multiple sclerosis, cancer and AIDS or by the harsh drugs that are sometimes used to treat them. They believe that marijuana is the most effective, safest and cheapest way in treating different illnesses. Moreover, some scientists claimed that marijuana can be used to treat these varieties of conditions. Further, mild to moderate nausea as the effect of chemotherapeutic drugs can be alleviated by THC and is helpful in addressing problems associated with AIDS such as nausea and severe weight loss. Younger people may find marijuana more effective to treat nausea than older people due to their tolerance to its mind-altering side effects and the prescription of dronabinol may produce psychological effects that are inappropriate for some older people. Another illness that can be treated by marijuana, as they claimed, is glaucoma, a condition in the eyes where there is increased pressure in the eyeball, which can lead to vision loss. Moreover, a study conducted in the early 1970's revealed that smoking marijuana can reduce pressure in the eyes however no explanation can be given as to the effect of cannabinoids to the condition.

THC is the major component of marijuana, and many insist of its harmful effects but doctors, if given a chance will most likely to prescribe it. Many claimed of its potent effect as a painkiller. Records show that since in the 1800s, people considered marijuana as beneficial. In fact, it is widely used as a relief for pain since some studies reveal of the analgesic properties of cannabinoids. With this, like codeine, THC can also be used as a treatment for cancer pain aside from the fact that it has a synergistic effect when combined with opiate pain medications to provide pain relief at lower dosages. There are also researches that claimed of the effectiveness of cannabinoids in the treatment of muscle spasms, tremors, and pain of multiple sclerosis, which is a disease of the nervous system.
Legalization of Marijuana

Among the medical community that advocates to legalize the marijuana is the American College of Physicians or ACP. Meanwhile, chemotherapy cause cancer patients to experience nausea, appetite loss, and severe pain and AIDS patients exhibit variety of symptoms and the study conducted by ACP revealed that marijuana contains an active compound that is absent in the medications used to relieve chemotherapeutic effects. Using vaporization, the ACP believes that it will eliminate the harmful effects of smoking and retain the benefits that the patients seek. The APC study showed that Matrinol, which is used as substitute for marijuana, can cause more side effects and at the same time less effective with regards to therapeutic purposes due to slow absorption. Moreover, marijuana, cannot be attributed as the culprit of serious drug abuse. Opiates are highly addictive yet medically effective.

Some studies also claimed that THC is a very safe drug. An experiment was conducted using animals showed that it can tolerate doses up to 1,000mg/kg which is equivalent to a 70kg person swallowing 70grams of the drug. Despite of widespread illegal use of cannabis, they were few reported cases that died from an overdose. Government statistics in Britain, has only five cases of death that is allegedly due to marijuana during 1993-1995, but further investigation showed that these deaths were caused by inhalation of vomit which cannot be attributed directly to marijuana. Comparing these statistics to other commonly used recreational drugs, this is quite too low figures (Iversen, p.71).

According to one literature that physical and mental harm will only be experienced by those who will use the dug often such as using it on a daily basis. Conversely, for those who use it occasionally, they will not be experiencing lasting harmful effects. It is not advised for individuals who have psychotic thought tendencies to use marijuana as this will increase the risk of having psychotic illnesses. Using marijuana in large doses regularly will likely result to lower educational attainment which will also get you to lower income and can also cause physical damage to airways. There is also a big chance of becoming an addict. . However, there is small amount of evidence that these harmful effects of marijuana will persist once you stop using the drug (Iversen, p.71)
Furthermore, another study conducted shows that during the use of marijuana can cause a negative effect on global IQ but only for those who smoked 5 or more joint per wee. Furthermore, it also showed that there were no negative effects for those who have been previously using the drug but has already stopped. With these results, they have made a conclusion that marijuana cannot cause long-term negative effect with regards to global intelligence. According to Gray (887) stressed that it has not been determined if marijuana has residual effects on cognitive domains like memory and attention.

Moreover, further study was conducted to find out the effect of marijuana to our memory. They noted that regular cannabis users performed worse in memory tests; however, the magnitude of the effects was very small. These suggests that cannabis compound, since it is believed it has therapeutic value, a good safety margin from neurocognitive standpoint should be established in consideration of more limited conditions of exposure (Grant, p.687-688).
A careful research was done to examine the medical effects of marijuana use. It showed that not a single human fatality in United States proven to have resulted solely from ingestion of marijuana. An experiment was conducted in monkeys exposing them to marijuana. The experiment showed that the dose required for overdose death was massive and practically unachievable for humans who are notably contrast to other substance in common use like alcohol and sleeping pills (Shafer).

Another study was conducted in Australia showing that marijuana can minimize the responsibility rate and lower crash risk They explained that the consumption of marijuana is either can increase driving ability or drivers who use it, will have better judgment in driving to balance for any loss of skills (Drummer). The study was conducted by using road studies and stimulator. Drivers who used marijuana tends to slowed down and drive more carefully. This compensation mind set where they balance their lack of skills by being more cautious is helpful in reducing the possibility of being the culprit in motor vehicle accident because they have more time to respond and avoid collisions. But, it should be also taken into consideration that behavioral compensation is not enough to manage the reduced safety margins which will result to impairment of driving functioning and capacity (Laberge, p.980).

To be able to contribute a resolution on the debate whether to legalize marijuana or not, the National Institute of Health conducted a scientific meeting. The purpose of this is to be able to review the scientific data with regards to the potential therapeutic uses of marijuana and the need for more feasibility research. The Expert group takes into consideration few factors. It is important in this study the discovery of receptors in the central nervous system for cannabinoid compounds, and the existence of an endogenous legend for these receptors. Using this discovery , this will lead to more basic research to be able to find out the functions of cannabinoid receptors . This will be the key to underlying probable therapeutic applications. Thus, this study allows bridging of knowledge starting from molecular neurobiology to animal studies then to human clinical studies.

Moreover, despite of the THC capsule being available in the market, this does not disregard the need to evaluate potential medical utility of marijuana. There may be other compounds in marijuana that has beneficial therapeutic properties although Delta-9-THC is the major psychoactive component. Thus, there is substantial difference of the bioavailability and therapeutic possibility when it is smoked or from oral dosage form. That is why there is a need to study the pharmacological actions of other constituents of cannabis leaf, as well as determining whether there is a differential benefit when it is smoked or the oral dronabinol. However, they still need to take into consideration the harmful effect with smoking the marijuana as well as the short-term and long-term effects.
The group presented few conclusions: Although there was evidence that marijuana can relieve pain, there is only a thin margin between the dose that produce useful analgesia and the producing unacceptable CNS effects. This study did not involved smoked marijuana for the patients being tested. There was also pre-clinical evidence that there is a potential therapeutic role of cannabinoids for epilepsies, particularly generalized and partial tonic-clinic seizures. There were also reported individual cases that smoking marijuana can help in treating dystonic states. However, for Parkinson's disease or Huntington's chorea, smoking mariuana or even oral THC administration is not effective. The cannabinoids is effective as immune modulators in animal experiments of neurological conditions like experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE) and neuritis.

In addition, a strong relationship between increased eating and marijuana use was being shown by survey data in healthy populations and clinical studies. The marijuana is noted to be able to increase the number of times the patients eat per day and the food enjoyment. However, mechanistic studies were conducted with regards to taste and satiety of the food, showing that marijuana does not affect the taste or produce a collapse of normal satiety mechanisms. The use of marijuana is not the cause of the increase of food intake but is influenced by social setting only. The NIH, in accordance to these findings, recommended conduction of more research that are scientifically acceptable in clinical trial design and are subject to appropriate statistical analysis.

Lastly, the battle over legalization of marijuana has implications that should be considered. Whether marijuana has therapeutic potentials, one important consideration is the fact that many engage in abusing it and in a way became non therapeutic than therapeutic. Thus, it is imperative to understand fully the consequences over its legalization and the advantages as well as disadvantages of marijuana to come up with a sound decision. Moreover, the ability of marijuana to cure a number of conditions or relieve variety of symptoms should not be the only aspects that should be considered. Therefore, it should be proven that the benefits of marijuana surpass the disadvantages. Furthermore, the Government should be responsible enough in dealing with this issue- whether marijuana is advantageous and should be considered legal.

References

Grant, Igor. "Non-Acute Neurocognitive Effects of Cannabis Use." Journal of the International
Neuropsychological Society (2003): 687-688.

Gray, Robert. "Current and former marijuana use: preliminary findings of a longitudinal study of
effects on IQ in young adults." Canadian Medical Association Journal (2002): 887

Iversen, Leslie. "Long-Term Effects of Exposure to Cannabis." Current Opinion in
Pharmacology (2005): 71
Laberge, Jason. "Research Note: Cannabis and Driving- Research Needs and Issues for
Transportation Policy." Journal of Drug Issues (2004): 980
Shafer, Raymond. "A Comparative Appraisal of the Health and Psychological Consequences of Alcohol, Cannabis, Nicotine, and Opiate Use." National Commission on Marijuana and
Drug Abuse (1995):
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Web Site: http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana/ Accessed on 4/4/2008