(*REVISED*) Arguing With Sources
Medical
Aaron Olson
Argument Essay Preliminary
Professor AnDrea Cleaves
12/17/08
Marijuana should not be legal to grow, possess, or use for anyone for any reason whatsoever in the United States of America. There are far too many health risks involved with marijuana for it to be recommended by a physician. It makes me sick just thinking that a doctor with an M.D., who has the responsibility to seek out the best overall treatment for his or her patients’ health, could recommend inhaling a toxic smoke containing over 400 chemicals into our delicate lungs. If doctors are prescribing marijuana to patients it will make more people think that it’s okay to “self medicate”. It is scary how popular marijuana has gotten over the past few decades. Currently there are 13 states that have voted to legalize marijuana for specific medicinal purposes. These states include: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Rhode Island, Montana, and Vermont. This means that over a quarter of our states have legalized marijuana for medicinal use! According to http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org, all you need for a prescription to medical marijuana in California are symptoms of nausea, depression, and even anorexia! Another source, http://norml.org said that similar minimal requirements are need in Oregon sand Hawaii. However, common in all of these states, patients with symptoms such as chronic pain or muscle spasms can legally obtain marijuana from a physician. These conditions may be somewhat serious, and should no doubt be talked about with sensitivity, but they are not severe enough for doctors to just be handing out pot tickets to everyone who comes in and says they are depressed, or nauseous! It is an excuse for people to use a drug, and should not be tolerated any further. Cultivating, smoking, and distributing marijuana is against United States Federal law, and in these 13 states, that is exactly what is happening. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is a federal agency against drugs and should not allow the states decision to allow it for medicinal use. Places that distribute the medicinal drug in the states that allow it should be searched, seized of illegal illicit drugs, and shut down. It must be stopped immediately before all those drugs get into the hands of our children!
The truth is that marijuana is becoming more popular, and less frowned upon. A study performed by the Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) found that marijuana is much easier for teens to obtain than beer! The already powerful drug has also made huge advances in not only popularity, but in potency as well. Over the past several decades, new technology such as the hydroponic cultivation of plants has made marijuana easier to grow, and it made it much more potent. According to www.gtghydroponics.com, water is used instead of soil to grow a plant, requiring less space, and time for the plant to grow and mature. These technological advances have made marijuana much easier to grow and much stronger, causing the demand for it to grow as well as the supply!
Another serious issue about using marijuana is afoot. Marijuana use often leads to other more dangerous and addicting drugs including: cocaine, hallucinogens, prescription pills, opiates (heroine and opium), and even inhalants! According to www.marijuanaaddiction.com, researchers found that young people who smoke marijuana are two to five times more likely to move on to harder drugs than if they didn’t use it at all! People are smoking marijuana and when they get bored with it want something new. These researchers even published this information in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In addition to marijuana’s severe health risks, potential to lead to more dangerous drugs, and the fact that is an illegal drug that can get you into trouble, marijuana is also quite expensive. Although drugs like cocaine and heroine are much more expensive to obtain than marijuana, it is still of one the most expensive drugs in the United States. People who have never even used the drug are still paying for it through government taxes. www.mytwodollars.com states that our government spends $1 billion dollars of our tax money annually, by putting people in jail for marijuana, and another $8 billion dollars annually in criminal justice costs. Right now, 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates are in jail due to the marijuana laws, and we are paying to feed, clothe and shelter them. Is this the price we are willing to pay?
Marijuana is a serious, powerful drug that can lower your decision making skills, cause harmful effects on your body, get you into trouble, lead to other drugs, and make you spend all your hard earned money. It is an issue that is being cold shouldered and we must do something to stop it! The future is in our hands and we cannot allow marijuana to be legalized in any way! More and more states are allowing this “pandemic” inside their territory and it will continue to spread throughout the entire country if we don’t do something to stop it! It should be made illegal in all 50 of our beloved United States. Our future and our children’s future depend on it.
SOURCES
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/127823/why_we_should_keep_marijuana_illegal.html?cat=9
http://www.well.com/user/woa/fspot.htm -The main mind-altering (psychoactive) ingredient in marijuana is THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), but more than 400 other chemicals also are in the plant.
http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/ -
http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/viewresource.asp?resourceID=881-
2. California Ballot Proposition 215 — Approved Nov. 5, 1996 by 56% of voters
Effective: Nov. 6, 1996
Removes state-level criminal penalties on the use, possession and cultivation of marijuana by patients who possess a “written or oral recommendation” from their physician that he or she “would benefit from medical marijuana.” Patients diagnosed with any debilitating illness where the medical use of marijuana has been “deemed appropriate and has been recommended by a physician” are afforded legal protection under this act.
Approved Conditions: AIDS, anorexia, arthritis, cachexia, cancer, chronic pain, glaucoma, migraine, persistent muscle spasms, including spasms associated with multiple sclerosis, seizures, including seizures associated with epilepsy, severe nausea; Other chronic or persistent medical symptoms.
Amended: Senate Bill 420 
(PDF 70KB)
Effective: Jan. 1, 2004
Imposes statewide guidelines outlining how much medicinal marijuana patients may grow and possess.
Possession/Cultivation: Qualified patients and their primary caregivers may possess no more than eight ounces of dried marijuana and/or six mature (or 12 immature) marijuana plants. However, S.B. 420 allows patients to possess larger amounts of marijuana when recommended by a physician. The legislation also allows counties and municipalities to approve and/or maintain local ordinances permitting patients to possess larger quantities of medicinal pot than allowed under the new state guidelines.
S.B. 420 also grants implied legal protection to the state’s medicinal marijuana dispensaries, stating, “Qualified patients, persons with valid identification cards, and the designated primary caregivers of qualified patients … who associate within the state of California in order collectively or cooperatively to cultivate marijuana for medical purposes, shall not solely on the basis of that fact be subject to state criminal sanctions.”
Attorney General’s Guidelines:
On Aug. 25, 2008, California Attorney General Jerry Brown issued guidelines for law enforcement and medical marijuana patients to clarify the state’s laws. Read more about the guidelines here.
www.gtghydroponics.com -Hydroponics consist of growing of plants in water instead of soil. To do this successfully, the water must be enriched with nutrients and sometimes oxygenated. Also, the plants must be placed in some type of inert medium like sand to anchor the roots.
http://www.marijuanaaddiction.info/news-left.htm?aid=49 -
New research confirms that marijuana is a gateway drug for most teens who use it.
Some will tell you marijuana is a harmless drug, but the Journal of the American Medical Association isn’t one of them.
Young people who smoke marijuana are two to five times more likely to move on to harder drugs. That is the formal opinion of researchers, who published their conclusions from a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
It is also the informal conclusion of two recent high school graduates who talked with Family News in Focus. The two, who asked that their names remain anonymous, said they no longer smoke marijuana, but that most of the kids they smoked pot with in high school went on to harder drugs and aren’t able to hold jobs.
One of the young persons said she started smoking pot because of peer pressure, but she stopped out of concern for her parents.
“I realized how bad it disappointed my parents,” she said. “My dad cried and so I stopped.”
http://www.mytwodollars.com/2007/02/12/9-billion-of-your-tax-dollars-is-spent-dealing-with-marijuana-laws-each-year/ -Right now, 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates are in jail due to the marijuana laws, and we are paying to feed, clothe, and shelter them. The fact that our government spends $1 billion dollars of our tax money putting people in jail for marijuana while allowing other drugs to be used in our society is insulting not only to my intelligence, but even more so to my wallet. And this $1 billion is only the beginning of the story, as hundreds of thousands are arrested each year just for violating marijuana laws, “costing taxpayers another $8 billion dollars annually in criminal justice costs”. Isn’t it time we take a real hard look at where our tax dollars go, and really put them towards projects that will benefit society?
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/106/casastudy.shtml -More interesting, but buried in the news coverage of the report, was the teens’ response to a question about the availability of various substances. Specifically, teens were asked which was easier to obtain among cigarettes, beer and marijuana. While the overwhelming majority of teens listed cigarettes as the easiest, marijuana was a clear second. In fact, seven times as many teens (35%) listed the prohibited marijuana as easiest to obtain as listed beer (5%), which of course is legal and regulated.
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