The Medical Benefits

Photo Courtesy of freetobacco.info

"Any estimate of illegal economic activity is bound to lack precision, since it attempts to quantify things that people have carefully tried to hide."(p.5 Schlosser)  This sentence from Scholosser's Reefer Madness I believe sums up the reason that marijuana has not, until recently, been looked at as a viable source of medicine.  It not only lies in the economics of drug, but also in the fact that nothing illegal could ever possibly be good for us.

However, in recent studies marijuana has been proven to be a medically sound alternative to prescription drugs when dealing with several diseases and ailments.  The most popular medical uses for cannabis include:

·         Helps to preserve brain function in patients with Alzheimer’s.

·         Prevention of seizer’s in patients with Epilepsy

·         Relieves pain in patients with Multiple Sclerosis

·         Slows growth of some breast cancer and brain cancer cells

To learn about how else marijuana can aid cancer patients click here.  With so many positive things that medical marijuana can do why are people so skeptic when it comes to the legalization of it?  The answer can only be ignorance. 

The research is still incomplete as to the many health benefits that marijuana possesses, but there are some sources that say it can also aid in the treatment of glaucoma, arthritis, and even depression.  It also seems to be a much safer alternative than prescription drugs, because marijuana doesn’t carry with it the many and carried side effects of manufactured drugs.  Pharmaceutical companies would be quite upset if legalization happened on a grand scale because marijuana would be a cheaper and more effective treatment for some of these illnesses.

That being said here’s a fact:

Prescription drugs kill about 100,000 people in the world each year.

Question:  Off the top of your head, do you know how many deaths are caused by using marijuana, either medicinally or recreationally?

            Answer:  None.   In 10,000 years of known use of cannabis there has never been a single death attributed to the drug.

List of Works Cited:

Choi, Charles Q. "Marijuanas Key Ingredient May Fight Alzheimers Disease | Fox News." Fox News. FOX News Network, 05 Oct. 2006. Web. 11 Aug. 2012. <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,218042,00.html>.

Gray, Richard. "Cannibis Could Be Used To Treat Epilepsy." The Telegraph. N.p., 10 Apr. 2011. Web. 11 Aug. 2012. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8440303/Cannabis-could-be-used-to-treat-epilepsy.html>.

Searing, Linda. "Smoking Marijuana Can Help Ease Symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis, Study Suggests." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 15 May 2012. Web. 11 Aug. 2012. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/smoking-marijuana-can-help-ease-symptoms-of-multiple-sclerosis-study-suggests/2012/05/14/gIQAmvZbPU_story.html>.

Fiket, Maja. "How Does Marijuana Help Cancer Patients?" LIVESTRONG.COM. N.p., 11 Mar. 2011. Web. 11 Aug. 2012. <http://www.livestrong.com/article/219707-how-does-marijuana-help-cancer-patients/>.

Photo: http://www.freetobacco.info/marijuana-2/councilman-bill-rosendahl-admits-to-using-medical-marijuana/

Schlosser, Eric. "The Underground." Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. 4. Print.