Morgan Gadley
16 September 2014
English 1102
Zhang
Marijuana, The Game Changer In Medicine and Society
Is marijuana as corrupt as society makes it out to be? Growing up, everyone is told that, “Drugs are bad for you,” time and time again. Now as a kid you don’t really appreciate the reasoning behind it, but you listen to your authority figure heedlessly. I remember being told this my entire life and even to this very day. But as I got older I realized that people would still use the drugs even though it’s unlawful. I could never comprehend why someone would go against the law and endanger their life just to use drugs? But as I got older I began to realize that these people truly didn’t do any harm to the public or to themselves by smoking marijuana. Many doctors and health specialist are advocates for consumers to smoke marijuana just because of its health benefits.
Marijuana is the third most popular recreational drug in America other than alcohol and tobacco, but marijuana is the only one that can benefit you the most out of the three. Alcohol and tobacco are drugs that many people have died from and harms the body as time goes by. Other medication that doctors prescribe to their patients is painkillers, and they can really kill you. According to McKnight et al. (2014), “There were 14,800 deaths from opiate overdose in 2008, according to the Center for Disease Control, and none from marijuana” (p. 4). Pain is the anxiety of disease, the symptom that reveals that all is not right with our bodies. Whether due to accident or illness, it is the greatest shared reason that people request medical aid. But because pain has numerous causes, some of which are poorly understood, it is often a challenging problem to treat. There are no truly valid medicines for certain types of pain, and sometimes relief comes only at the disbursement of unbearable side effects. Therefore, the search for new and better pain relievers, perhaps the oldest form of medicine, continues unchanged. Many doctors and health specialist are discovering the pain-relieving properties of marijuana. Its been used to treat a wide variety of painful conditions, from headache to the pain of childbirth. It has been used to decrease nausea and vomiting in chemotherapy and people with AIDS, and to treat pain and muscle spasticity. Its practice for other medical applications has been calculated, but there is inadequate data for assumptions about safety and usefulness. Temporary use spreads minor unfavorable effects, but does not appear to increase major unfavorable effects.
Challengers of medical marijuana have assumed many reasons for why it should not be legalized. One of the main reasons they argue is that “Marijuana smoke contains known carcinogens and produces dependency in users” (Medical). In numerous studies it has indicated that it does have some harm such as the harms related with smoking, however the National Academy of Science affirmed “marijuana’s short term medical benefits outweigh any smoking-related harms for some patients”(Medical). Yet marijuana has been proven to be damaging to the lungs than tobacco, a study in 2006 “found no evidence that marijuana smokers had higher rates of lung cancer” (Medical Marijuana). Bottorff et al. (2011) states that the FDA has experienced the efficacy of marijuana and has found that the cannabinoids are helpful in “treating pain accompanying with chemotherapy, postoperative recovery, and spinal cord injury, as well as neuropathic pain, which is repeatedly experienced by patients with metastatic cancer, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes” (p. 2).
Marijuana is a mood changing or psychoactive drug that has several nicknames, such as pot, weed, ganja, sensi, herb, and others. It is an ageless drug that dates back to hundreds of years to Asia. Plentiful amounts of cultures have used it during meditation, religious worship, and for intoxication. Marijuana itself comes from the Indian hemp plant. It is the third most widely recycled drug in the United States, according to a survey taken in 1988, and it is the number one illegally used drug in the United States. Cyril Wecht affirmed that “Marijuana is so popular that an estimated one out of every three people in the US have tried it and around 44% of US high school students have smoked it”. (p. 4) Marijuana users are not easily noticeable, nor is the drug just used in one area of society. The Indian hemp plant is discovered all over the world, including the US. There are three altered forms of Indian hemp. They are Cannabis Sativa, Cannabis India, and Cannabis Rudderalis. These three plants vary in size and mood altering effect. The hemp plant has many uses and has been farmed for centuries. Marijuana can be taken in three ways, by eating, made into a tea, or smoking, on that note smoking is the most accepted. Smoking it can be done three ways, through a pipe, a joint, blunt. A joint is a rolled piece of paper that is twisted at the ends. A blunt is normally an emptied cigar wrapper filled with marijuana.
Marijuana has lots of properties that can be used in just about anything pertaining to the process for healing the body. There has been lots of controversy on the legalization of marijuana for a very long time. Howard Bryant points out that “medical marijuana is currently legal in 20 states, eight of which are home to NFL teams, and it is almost universally accepted in the medical community as a safe and effective pain reliever”. Since then there has been bigger topics pertaining to the legalization of marijuana. Such as the 2014 Super Bowl game consisted two teams that states have legalized marijuana that are in affect. With that happening it questioned the NFL on its rules on how they are going to react to the teams that have the opportunity to use the drug. Pain is the remarkable continuous feeling of the NFL, so upholding of that pain is as fundamental to players as conquering the read option; whether through cortisone, painkillers or drugs and alcohol, they have always self-medicated to recover from the game that breakdowns their body. Which is why, more than any other sport, the NFL should lead the discussion on pondering medical marijuana as a therapeutic alternative.
Making marijuana as recovery drug can solve lots of problems pertaining to high overdose deaths in America. The CDC (2014) has researched that “drug overdose death rates in the United States have more than tripled since 1990 and have never been higher. In 2008, more than 36,000 people died from drug overdose, and most of these deaths were caused by prescriptions drugs” (p. 1). From this information that the CDC distributes, tells society that there needs to be a change in the drug prescribing practice. Legalizing marijuana can help lower these numbers dramatically because Wing (2013) proves that “a marijuana smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times the amount of THC in a joint in order to be at rick of dying” (p. 1). Which is tremendously impossible to accomplish in a single day, prescribing marijuana to patients would not be such a pain for the doctor because he would not be worried about his patient over dosing or the drug not being strong enough to treat the pain.
Many other professional sports other that the NFL has very little rules for the use of marijuana, for example Hochman et al. (2014) explains “Winter Olympic athletes are all but given a free pass for smoking marijuana while out of competition” (p. 1). If I’m not mistaken the Winter Olympics only occurs every two years so that’s a long time they can smoke marijuana and train. When competition comes around the Olympians has to take a month in a half when they cannot smoke weed. To add to the sports that really does not mind the usage of marijuana, the NHL alone among the four big four north America professional sports, does not include marijuana on its banned substances. Which means that there are no drug tests that are given to the players throughout the year. With the privilege to smoke marijuana throughout the year the players are able to treat themselves through the pain and injuries that they come across. The NFL and the NHL has similar injuries because both sports involve a lot of physical activity, the human body needs some type of enhancement or relaxer to control the pain.
Players in the NFL are struggling to maintain healthy bodies and marijuana will help tremendously in treating the players. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was asked if there would ever be a time where players would be permitted to use medical marijuana in states where its legal? Instead of saying no, Goodell (2014) offered the following, “I don’t know what’s going to develop as far as the next opportunity for medicine to evolve and to help either deal with pain or help deal with injuries, but we will continue to support the evolution of medicine”(p. 1). If the commissioner is up for a change with different methods to heal the players faster and efficient then I do not understand why has it not been in affect with the NFL? But only time will tell with the NFL because there are lots of rules and regulations they have to follow to make sure they don’t come across any lawsuits.
Marijuana has beneficial properties that not only can help you physically but also mentally. For example medical marijuana can help military veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a condition as old as war itself, but that in years past went either unrecognized or seen as a soldier’s personal failure, his “shell shock” or battle fatigue.” Smith (2013) points out “ many military veterans and civilians suffering from Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder are finding relief with marijuana, but even in some marijuana states, its use is not approved” (p. 1). To not prescribe a helpful drug to a needed patient is unethical, especially if in other states that do allow the treatment and they see that the drug is working well should be a major problem.
There are still veterans that come back to the United States from Afghanistan that suffer from PTSD, Smith (2013) estimated that “up to 225,000 veterans will return from the war with PTSD” (p. 2). Marijuana is a pain reliever, stress reliever and also a drug that relaxes the body, having the drug marijuana, as a medication to help the veterans recover from fighting for our country is not a bad idea. As a matter of fact it could save lots of people lives that are not veterans as well, Smith (2013) shapes out the other victims such as “child abuse survivors, rape survivors, and emergency response workers” (p. 2).

While researching for medical marijuana, I have not yet seen an article about anyone dying from the drug, or any overdose caused by marijuana. Wecht (2014) a well-respected forensic pathologist, he pronounces, “I have performed approximately 18,000 autopsies, and I have supervised or reviewed approximately 38,000 additional post-mortem reports since 1957. As a forensic pathologist performing autopsies on hundreds of people each year who die as a result of drug toxicity, I have never signed out a death due to cannabis, nor have I ever seen such an autopsy report from any other forensic pathologist” (p. 4). So from my research and Cyril Wecht’s experience in his career there has not been a single death from marijuana.
Physicians prescribe the drugs that are known for killing people. Wecht (2014) describes, “oxycodone, hydrocodone, vicodin and other opioids, as well as tranquilizers, sedatives, antidepressants and anxiolytic drugs, are prescribed in large amounts every day by thousands of physicians throughout the United States, even though it is well known that these drugs have produced an epidemic wreaking havoc throughout the country. There are now more deaths directly cause by these drugs each year in the United States than are caused by motor-vehicle accidents” (p. 4). Simply there is no real reason or justifiable basis for the refusal of the federal government and most states to decriminalize marijuana.

Recently, Aaron Davis figured out, “possessing marijuana and smoking it in the privacy of ones home would no longer be criminal offenses in the nation’s capital under a bill passed by the D.C. Council, putting the district at the forefront of simmering national debate over decriminalization” (p. 1). Decriminalizing marijuana can effect a lot of people lives, Davis (2014) sates, “in D.C. there are more than 5,000 arrest per year for marijuana; 90 percent are African American” (p.2). Its sad to say this but decriminalizing marijuana will really only help the young black men/women who were convicted with a drug possession charge. It seems like to me like every race and most religions smoke marijuana but African Americans are always the ones going to jail for it. Further more, we are slowly legalizing marijuana and more and more people understand how the importance marijuana can dramatically affect a person’s life. Some reasons the federal government will not legalize medical marijuana around the United States is because marijuana can be grown everywhere and they feel like they can not make any currency from the drug.
The one and only president of the United States are trying to ease the marijuana restrictions but it will be a job for congress. Miller (2014) implies, “President Barack Obama says in a new interview that that its up to Congress to remove marijuana from the federal government’s list of the most serious narcotics, implying but not explicitly saying that he might support such a move” (p. 1). Obama implies that he might support doing so, but it’s not a direct statement, which is okay because you always have to start from somewhere. I feel if Obama was not pro for legalization of marijuana he would come out and say it, but with him beating around the bush Obama makes a clear impression that he is a supporter for the marijuana process. Miller (2014) adds on “ Obama has admitted to his own drug use as a student in his memoir, Dreams From My Father, writing of using marijuana and “maybe a little blow” (p. 2). Now if the President of the United States admits to using marijuana while growing up and now he runs our country, what should that tell you about the drug marijuana? Its not a harmful drug it also fluctuates the mind for you to focus on things you need to accomplish and relaxes the mind and plus heals the body.
Coming to America we are driven to live in a freedom country and live the American Dream, and the only way I can see us doing that is if we had the right to use every resource that the world brings to our feet. Marijuana is a plant, it is a drug like no other, and it is grown from the earth’s very own soil. Other drugs that are legal in this world are manmade and kill thousands of lives everyday. If we not so controlled in America we wouldn’t have this problem, the government wanted to make sure they had some type of control over us so they made marijuana illegal so they can make other drugs to take its place in healing the body.
Marijuana use on the outside of the United States, in some countries marijuana is really a normal part of their pharmacies and national drug formulary system. Dr. Aggarwal (n.d) explains to us, “There are national systems for prescriptions for marijuana in Canada and Israel. And other countries in Europe are actually importing from the pharmacies of those countries in Europe are actually importing from the pharmacies of those countries to stock for their patients, for example other European countries like Norway and Germany and Italy are allowing patients to import from the pharmacies in Holland. So marijuana in those countries, you can find it in your local pharmacy” (p. 1).
The United States should take action on learning how they were able to make marijuana legal and useful in their country. I don’t understand how we can live on the same planet and not realize that half of the world is appreciating the drug and half of the world is being so blind or selfish on making the herb legal. Another example Dr. Aggarwal (n.d) points out is, “In India there is a huge government regulated system where they give people marijuana dissolved in a yogurt drink called lassi. And you can go and purchase that in various, in hundreds of these shops in some of the states of India. And it’s seen as a spiritual use and the use really goes up for certain times in festivals of the year like Holi or certain Hindu festivals like the birth of Shiva, one of their Gods” (p. 1) First they turn marijuana into some type of yogurt base and sell it in stores all around India, and India is one of the top riches countries in the world. Also marijuana is also in some of India’s religions, which means marijuana has been around for a very long time for it to be incorporated in a religion. Additional information Dr. Aggarwal (n.d) presents is, “in Switzerland and Czech Republic there are systems where they, even to some extent Belgium, they allow people to form small groups called clubs and they grow cannabis together collectively or they grow it in their homes. And that’s completely legal and tolerated in those countries” (p. 1). But sometimes it can be the other way around in other low poverty countries that will sometimes put you to death for example like Malaysia, Singapore, Qatar, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia.
With the views and pin points pertaining to marijuana we all know that smoking is not legal everywhere in the united states. So it is senseless to get imprisoned for a crime that you could commit in another time zone or just down the street. When people take the risk and gambles with their life to use marijuana that should let us know the importance of the drug or how stupid people can get. But if marijuana is helping people cure their pain than why not break all the rules, do what’s best for you. If you don’t want to get sloppy drunk all the time and you just want to relax and smoke a blunt then what the heck, do what’s best for you. What the government fails to realize, once you let another state get away with something other states around it feel the need to be able to do the same. If they can pull statistics and say half of the nation is doing marijuana, I can honestly say that’s wrong, just about most of the nation has been in somewhat involvement with marijuana.
In conclusion, marijuana is more than just an illegal drug; it is also used for medicinal purposes as well as an extracurricular activity. Marijuana, or as the generation refers to it, “weed”, should be legalized due to the positive aspects such as, more beneficial than alcohol and drugs, treating pain, religious worship, and most importantly for medical uses. According to drugpolicy.org, marijuana should be handled like the use of alcohol and tobacco, not only will it decrease criminals but also increase job and economic opportunities. Marijuana legalization has been an issue for more than four decades. This has been a controversial issue and over half of American citizens agree with the legalization (Majority Now Supports Legalizing Marijuana). As you can see, marijuana isn’t a harmful substance. It has become useful to those who suffer and are in pain. Therefore, America should finally come to the agreement of legalization.

References
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Bryant, H. (2013), Smoke Screen. ESPN The Magazine, 1-2. http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/10110004/is-nflembrace-marijuana- espn-

Breech, J. (2014). Roger Goodell doesn’t rule out medical marijuana use by players. CBSSports. 1. http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24402661/roger- goodell-doesn’t-rule-out-medical-marijuana-use-by-players
Davis, A. (2014) D.C Council votes to eliminate jail time for marijuana possession. The Washington Post, Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com.

Bottorf, J L., Bissell, L. L., Balneaves, L. G., Oliffe, J. L., Kang, H. K., Capler, N., & O’Brien, R.K. (2011). Health effects of using cannabis for therapeutic purposes: A gender analysis of users perspectives. Substance Use & Misuse, 46(6), 769- 780. Doi: 10.3109/10826084.2010.537732

Miller, Z. (2014). Obama says easing marijuana restrictions a job for congress. TIME Swampland. http://swampland.time.com

Smith, P. (2013) Military veterans push for approval of medical marijuana to treat ptsd. The Daily Chronic. http://www.thedailychronic.net

Hochman, B. & Saunders, P. (2013). Athletes and pot: Legalized marijuana in a league of its own. The Denver Post Sports. http://www.denverpost.com

Policy impact: prescription painkiller overdose. (2013) Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/rxbrief/

Wing, N. (2013) Here are all the people who died from marijuana overdose. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com.

Wecht, C. (2014) The mythology of marijuana. Pittsburg Post- Gazette, http;//www.post-gazette.com

"Marijuana Legalization and Regulation." Drug Policy Alliance. Drug Policy Alliance, n.d. Web. 09 Apr. 2014. <http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana-legalization- and-regulation>.

"Majority Now Supports Legalizing Marijuana." Pew Research Center for the People and the Press RSS. Pew Research Center, n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2014. <http://www.people-press.org/2013/04/04/majority-now-supports- legalizing-marijuana/>.