Philip Indorf November 20, 2003 MWF Noon Argumentative Essay Marijuana, Its Effects, and Its Legality Marijuana has been given a bad rap ever since its first popularity in the United States. False and incriminating propaganda has helped our government pass laws illegalizing this curative plant. Recently, the masses have shifted their thinking and now cry out for some fact on the issue: and the facts are that marijuana has many beneficial attributes. When government sponsored commissions document the drug’s relative harmlessness, the reasoning behind its criminal sanctions comes into question; the laws that make marijuana illegal are baseless and should be repealed. This paper will address some of the many fears and gray areas concerning marijuana and its use. Three main topics will be discussed: how being marijuana intoxicated affects you, how marijuana can be used as a medicine, and how it will affect the country if marijuana was made legal. Before discussing the health or any other benefits it is important to address the “high” caused by marijuana. Marijuana in larger doses alters the mind and this is an unfounded cause of fear by the common man. The experience of getting high has many effects which when summed up could be compared to the acts of a mythical fairy. Being high is comparable to being drunk: it causes a different reaction to different people in different environments. Despite this, there are some general reactions that are commonplace among people intoxicated by marijuana. Firstly, your thinking is altered when on a high and a sense of euphoria will come over you. People with this altered mind state will go into excruciating detail in whatever topic they are conversing about and will attempt to look at the issue from new and different facets to gain information from all sides (Zimmerman 165). Whenever new information is gained, the persons may have a giddy reaction and are usually very gleeful and happy with themselves. Hand in hand with this new attention to detail and focus is an increase for that focus to shift (165). People will forget what they are talking about with only a short pause and will be highly interested in whatever topic comes next on their agenda. There are also some physical effects of being high. The most commonplace are an increased sensual acuity and the “munchies,” (168). If someone has smoked more than really necessary to get high, users will often get very sleepy. It is true that the consumption of marijuana will affect your mind and body but in no way are they negative or reason for worry. The physical and physiological effects of casual marijuana use are not reason for criminal sanction and the curative properties even less so. Within the past decade, the government has called for various studies into the possible medicinal uses of marijuana, one of which was conducted by the US Institute of Medicine (IOM). The IOM concluded that marijuana had “benefits for the terminally ill,” (Ault 1). The 11 person panel suggested that marijuana is beneficial in fighting off nausea and pain, as well as increasing one’s appetite (1). The main problem with the integration of marijuana into the user’s system is the inhalation of the smoke which may cause cancer, much like tobacco smoke. The IOM panel proposed that a specially made inhalation device be requisitioned to sidestep this issue and to make the benefits usable by patients without fear of cancer (1). This and many other findings by multiple panels are being ignored by the government and drowned out by federal law even though it is obvious that the people yearn for this medicine; there is a constant outcry for marijuana legalization as shown by bills and changes in state law. Another study by the National Institutes on Drug Abuse (NIDA) branch of the National Institutes of Health also assembled an advisory panel to “review the scientific evidence on the medical use of marijuana,” (Fackelmann 1). Their findings backed up all the information provided by the IOM. NIDA stated on record that weed inhalation in superior than pills in treating nausea and vomiting such as the kind inflicted by chemotherapy because the patient can increase or decrease the dosage at will (2). The main ingredient of both the pills and marijuana is the chemical THC which instigates therapeutic affects in the right dosages: too much and you get high, too little and you do not take full advantage of its healing properties. Another benefit of using marijuana as opposed to THC pills is that marijuana has no lag time until it starts becoming effective; marijuana takes affect immediately (Zimmerman, 22). The effects do not only apply to chemotherapy patients. Marijuana is also being championed for the causes of appetite problems in AIDS sufferers and glaucoma patients. Through extensive research, a lot of marijuana myths and facts have been verified or disproved. There is no existing evidence of a marijuana overdose or brain damage caused by the drug (Levine 1). The only permanent mental changes occur in the loss of short term memory which only occurs in heavy users trying to break the habit. Most scientists agree that marijuana itself does nothing to affect your heart, hormones or reproductive powers (1). Marijuana also in no way is a “gateway” drug, meaning a drug that increases your chances of taking other drugs just by consumption. This was a huge win for the proponents of marijuana because the use of marijuana as a gateway drug was a lie used by the government in past anti-marijuana campaigns. Like tobacco smoking, marijuana smoking does cause cancer of the airways and bronchitis for the simple reason that you are inhaling smoke. Lastly, marijuana does lower some of your bacterial immuno-fighting powers but only during intoxication (1). Since many of these myths have been straightened out, a lot of the public’s fear of marijuana have been proven groundless. People rallying against marijuana legalization sometimes look to the drug’s effect on society and government as opposed to its effect on its users. The current effect marijuana has on these issues is negative - not because of the drug itself but because of the high amounts of investment gone into enforcing current drug policy. To halt use, production and trafficking of marijuana costs billions of dollars of American taxpayer’s money each year. All of this money is wasted as it is impossible to arrest one third of the US population. As of 1988, 33% of the US population 12 years of age or older “admit to using marijuana some time in their lives” (McVay 3). When acclimatizing to this statistic, remember that this is an illegal substance and that most members of the marijuana-smoking public shy away from exposing themselves. Prisons have been pressured to the boiling point trying to contain all the lawbreakers of the land. The legalization of marijuana would help alleviate some of this pressure because over 28% of drug offenders are pulled in and put behind bars for the use of this simple weed, in many cases ruining clean records (3). Almost one third of drug incarcerations are because of this introvertive substance and the government estimates that they have only captured 2-3% of their conservative estimate of marijuana users (7). New programs such as the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF), which is sponsored by the Department of Justice, are beginning to clear out some of the fog behind this plant and its relation to violence. One of the government’s past propaganda points which really culled the population into fear of weed alluded to a direct correlation between weed and berserk-like violence. These studies show that the relation of weed and violent crime pales in comparison with substances such as heroin, cocaine, and alcohol, a legal substance. Over 40% of violent offenders report being “under the influence” of alcohol while committing their crimes (7). The fact that cannabis and its effects are much less violent than other illegal and legal substances is a piece of knowledge that the pro-marijuana section of society wishes to share with the general public. In a laissez-faire economy such as ours, there is only one powerful force that pushes us forward: the public will. The public is concerned with two things, money and the protection of that money or related investments. Since marijuana has been shown to be more than safe and currently a drain on national coffers, Americans need to know that this particular leech can be turned to profit. The cost of weed’s conversion from an illegal substance to a government taxed product would be minimal because the structure is already in place. Borrowing the general outline of the market good nicotine would simplify any transition. There would be government and/or state taxes and ads placed to discourage first time users (9). Tobacco laws would have to include cannabis until marijuana could stand on its own as a market investment and have its own laws in place. Fortune magazine estimated that legal tax earnings from marijuana would be at least 11 billion dollars (9). This kind of government income would more than pay for any legalization fees and may help in paying off the huge national deficit. To get a glimpse at what could be, you would have to look towards countries that are more in tune with the safe wants of their people, such as Holland and the Netherlands. Since decriminalizing marijuana and hashish and allowing it on the open market, heroin addiction and crime rates have been on the decline (10). The number of users, both adult and youth, has gone down (10). If the United States could use a similar system and improve upon it, there is nothing but good to be gained. Marijuana is a drug that was made illegal through the use of incorrect mass propaganda. Now that scientific fact is rolling in showing how beneficial marijuana is to the user, speculation has begun on its effects on society and culture. Once these facts reach the general populace who can compare it to tobacco and alcohol, the public will be right in joining the cause for marijuana legalization.