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Marijuana

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Intro: Since 1972, marijuana has been classified as a Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. The US Congress placed marijuana under this classification because it was considered to have "no accepted medical usage." However, 15 of the 50 states, plus DC have legalized the usage of medical marijuana. With so many states choosing to ignore Congress' decision, it is clear that there is something more to be said about using marijuana for medicinal purposes. Hillary Rodham Clinton, current US Secretary of State, summed up nicely the need for more discussion on the issue at a town hall meeting at Plymouth State College on October 11, 2007, while she was the New York State Senator:

"With respect to medical marijuana, you know I think that we have had a lot of rhetoric and the federal government has been very intent upon trying to prevent states from being able to offer that as an option for people who are in pain. I think we should be doing medical research on this. We ought to find out what the elements are that claim to be existing in marijuana that might help people who are suffering from cancer and nausea-related treatments."

Point 1: So what do opponents of the legalization of medical marijuana have to say on the issue? They argue that with all the legal drugs available, there should be no use for marijuana. They say that it is addictive, a gate way to harder drugs, injures the lungs, brain, and immune system, and impairs driving ability. However, many of these points could be used to make alcohol and cigarettes illegal as well. Both have been proven to be addictive and harmful on the body. * Show graph of comparing danger of other drugs * Marijuana is far less toxic and less addictive than alcohol * Alcohol is connected to more aggressive and reckless behavior, violent acts, sexual assaults, serious injuries, and more emergency room visits. Marijuana, however, reduces the likelihood of these occurring. * 40,000 US deaths per year are caused by alcohol, while there has never been one death due to the use of marijuana. * Marijuana users are actually less likely to develop lung cancer or emphysema than tobacco user.
If alcohol and cigarettes can be legal for leisure activities, than why can't marijuana, a safer drug, be legal for medicinal purposes?

Point 2: There are numerous legal drugs that doctors can prescribe you that can relieve pain, but may cause horrible side effects and can become addicting. Vicodin, Percoset, Oxycoton, and other pain killers are known to be highly addictive and many abuse them. Marijuana has been proven to help relieve the symptoms of many common conditions such as AIDs and HIV, Alzheimers, arthritis, Crohn's, depression, eating disorders, epilepsy, fibromyalgia, glaucoma, MS, nausea associated with chemotherapy, any sort of physical pain (like migraines), and Tourette's. * As many as 10 per cent of users may become psychologically addicted to marijuana, but there is no evidence that proves that marijuana can be physically addictive, unlike pain killers and other drugs that can cause severe physical withdraw symptoms.
With so many beneficial uses of marijuana, why use synthetic drugs with horrible side effects, when you can use a natural pain reliever that comes from the ground and not from a chemical factory?

Point 3: If medical marijuana were legal, the government would benefit from it. In California, medical marijuana is a billion dollar a year business. The state's patients are consuming between $870 million and $2 billion worth of medical marijuana per year. That could translate to betwee $70 million and $120 million in tax revenue for the state if it could be taxed like other herbal medicines. However, since the federal government does not recognize the state's legalization of medical marijuana, many dispensaries do not pay sales tax and hide their financial records since it could be used against them in a federal investigation. Legalizing the usage of medical marijuana across the country could bring $40 billion to $100 billion in new revenue. It would be taking this revenue from organized and violent crime leaders and putting into the US economy, which we all know could use as much help as it can get. The same thing happened during the 1933 Prohibition, why not try it again?

Conclusion: still working on it

I have all my sources saved, just haven't written up a bibliography yet as I still would like to do a bit more research. Bulleted items are things that I need to explain in a bit more detail, but I didn't want to completely write it out in an outline.

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