LEGALIZING POT: The good and the bad

I can remember when in the 1950s, there were movements attempting to bring legalization to marijuana usage but their efforts were to naught. Police in the United States still prosecute over 800,000 Americans annually for violating state marijuana laws.

The penalties for those busted and convicted vary greatly in various states in the US, ranging from the imposition of small fines to license revocation to actual incarceration. But for the citizens arrested in the State of Oklahoma for being in possession of a few ounces of pot, the ramifications of even a minor pot bust are likely to be exceptionally severe. For example, paraplegic Jimmy Montgomery was sentenced to life in prison which on appeal was later reduced to 10 years after he was caught with two ounces of medical pot in his wheelchair. Overall, some 13,000 Oklahomans are busted for pot annually. Only 12 other states arrest a greater percentage of their population for weed, and arguably no state sentences those convicted of possession of pot more harshly than Oklahoma. There was at time many years ago when the penalty of mere possession of pot in that state was death.

The good

For the most part, in various countries and in various states in the US, times have changed. The use of marihuana for medical purposes has been approved for those persons whose doctors have stated that marihuana will ease many of the symptoms of many illnesses which are accompanied by pain, nausea and vomiting. It is the CBD (Cannabidiol) in the drug that is effective in treating these illnesses.

Medical cannabis refers to the parts of the herb cannabis (another name for marihuana)  used as a physician-recommended form of medicine or herbal therapy, or to synthetic forms of specific cannabinoids such as THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol—an active ingredient in marijuana) as a physician-recommended form of medicine. The Cannabis plant has a long history of use as medicine in China, with legendary evidence dating back to in 2737 BCE. Cannabis is one of the 50 ‘fundamental’ herbs of traditional Chinese medicine, and is prescribed for a broad range of treatments for various illnesses.

The effectiveness of cannabis as an analgesic has been the subject of numerous studies. Doctors at the University of Oxford found that the effect of THC on the brain showed reduced response to pain thereby suggesting that the drug may help patients endure pain. Brain scans showed reduced activity in two centers of the brain where pain is registered: The mid-Anterior cingulate cortex and the right Amygdala. However, cannabis did not block the sensation of pain like morphine-based pain killers. The researchers also found a great degree of variation among individual reports of pain relief. A Canadian study showed cannabis can reduce ‘nerve pain’ from surgical complications or injuries. The study's twenty-one subjects suffered from chronic pain and patients who smoked cannabis with a 9.4% THC content reported less pain than those patients who smoked the placebo. The findings in US studies further have suggested that combination therapy could result in reduced opiate dosages. That can be a good thing because over use of opiates can be highly addictive.  

In glaucoma, (which can cause blindness) cannabis and THC have been shown to reduce intra-ocular pressure (IOP) by an average of 24% in people with normal IOP who have visual-field changes. In studies of healthy adults and glaucoma patients, IOP was reduced by an average of 25% after smoking a cannabis "cigarette" that contained approximately 2% THC—a reduction as good as that observed with most other medications available today, according to a review by the Institute of Medicine.

Cannabinoids may bring about antitumor effects by various mechanisms, including induction of cancer cell death, inhibition of cancer cell growth, and inhibition of tumor angiogenesis invasion and metastasis.

I know that I don’t have to convince anyone that the proper medical use of cannabis is a medical boon to sufferers who find it as a useful method of treatment for their illnesses.  

The bad

Despite what many marihuana users are prone to say, smoking marihuana can be addictive. One in ten people who ever tried marihuana became dependent at some point in their lives to it. For those who used marihuana several times, the chance was increased from one in five and then later to one in three and daily users are considered at the greatest risk of dependence with about a one in two of them becoming fully addicted to the drug.  

What are the adverse effects of marihuana addiction?

 The frontal lobe of the human brain contains most of the dopamine-sensitive neurons in the cerebral cortex. The dopamine system is associated with reward, attention, short-term memory tasks, planning, and motivation. Attention, memory and learning are impaired among heavy marijuana users, even after users discontinued its use for at least 24 hours. Heavy marijuana use is associated with residual neuropsychological effects even after a day of supervised abstinence from the drug. Heavy users displayed significantly greater impairment than light users on attention/executive functions, as evidenced particularly by greater preservations on card sorting and reduced learning of word lists. In other words, if you are going to school, college or university, smoking pot regularly will definitely have an adverse effect on your tests. In a survey of 150 marijuana using students, 59% surveyed report they sometimes forget what a conversation is about before it has ended. 41% report if they read while stoned they remembered less of what they had read hours later. Thirty-five of today's high school students in the US smoke marijuana and their learning processes suffer to some degree. Nine percent of them are addicted to marijuana. That is 1 in 11 students are addicted to that drug because of the THC in marijuana.

Impaired memory for recent events, difficulty concentrating, dreamlike states, impaired motor coordination, impaired driving and other psychomotor skills are a direct result of excessive marihuana use.  Further, slowed reaction time, impaired goal-directed mental activity, and altered peripheral vision are common associated effects. A roadside study of reckless drivers who were not impaired by alcohol, showed that 45% of these drivers tested positive for marijuana.

Physiological effects of marijuana include an alteration of heart rate. Use of marijuana may result in intense anxiety, panic attacks or paranoia.

The daily use of 1 to 3 marijuana joints appears to produce approximately the same lung damage and potential cancer risk as smoking 5 times as many cigarettes. A study by UCLA suggests that the way smokers inhale marijuana, in addition to its chemical composition, increases the adverse physical effects. The same lung cancer risks associated with tobacco also apply to marijuana users, even though they smoke far less. Benzopyrene is the chemical in tobacco that causes lung cancer. An average marijuana cigarette contains nearly 50% more benzopyrene than a tobacco cigarette. An average marijuana cigarette contains 30 nanograms of this carcinogen compared to 21 nanograms in an average tobacco cigarette (Marijuana and Health, National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine Report, 1982) Benzopyrene suppresses a gene that controls growth of cells. When this gene is damaged the body becomes more susceptible to cancer. This gene is related to half of all human cancers and as many as 70% of lung cancers.

Marijuana users may have many of the same respiratory problems that tobacco smokers have, such as chronic bronchitis and inflamed sinuses. Marijuana smoke produces airway injury, acute and chronic bronchitis, lung inflammation, and decreased pulmonary defenses against infection. Smoking one marijuana cigarette leads to air deposition of four times as much cancer-causing tar as does tobacco smoke.

Heavy marijuana use can affect hormones in both males and females. Heavy doses of the drugs may delay the onset of puberty in young men. Marijuana also can have adverse effects on sperm production. Among women, regular marijuana use can disrupt the normal monthly menstrual cycle and inhibit the discharge of eggs from the ovaries

Other concerns

Twenty of the states in the US have legalized the use of marihuana for medical use. I don’t have a problem accepting marihuana being used for that purpose. Where I do have a problem is recognizing the fact that there will be abuses of that law. As I said earlier, marihuana can be addictive and it is highly probably that even when a person who has a license to grow his own marihuana plants for treatment for his illnesses, however will he or she continue to grow their plants and use the marihuana because of their addiction to it after the need for medical marihuana lapses? Further, will he or she sell the marihuana to those who aren’t permitted by law to ingest it?

Further, why would we as a society want the tobacco industry to manufacture marihuana cigarettes for sale to those people who live in states where non-medical use of marihuana is permitted? Consider how the tobacco industry has killed millions of people over the years by selling ordinary nicotine-tobacco cigarettes to them. If eventually all the states in the US permit the sale of marihuana cigarettes to anyone over the age of 18, far more people will smoke them than who are currently smoking regular nicotine-tobacco cigarettes because of the high they will experience. Subsequently, millions more will eventually die because of lung cancer. Marihuana smoking will become the scourge that nicotine tobacco smoking used to be.

Nowadays, it is much harder for young people under the age of eighteen to get their hands on cigarettes in Canada and that is a good thing because most of them won`t get hooked on smoking nicotine-tobacco but what will happen if marihuana cigarettes are sold to those over 18-years-old age? Will they have to lock them up like they lock up their guns so that their children don’t steal them and smoke them for the high such cigarettes will give them?

How many children steal drugs for their parent`s medicine cabinets—drugs such as Valium, Reddelin, Oxycontin, just to name a few? Do you really believe that they won’t steal marihuana cigarettes from their parent’s stash?

If you still believe that permitting marihuana cigarettes to be sold to the general public is a good thing, then consider this scenario—

You and your wife take your children for a drive in the country and a young man who is driving his car is high on marihuana and he suddenly swerves his car to his left and crosses the median and smashes his car into your  car. Your wife and children are killed and you are paralyzed from the neck down. At the trial of the young man, he explains what happened. He admits that his driving was impaired by the effects of marihuana and when he swerved to his left,  he did this because he thought that there was an intersection at that point of the highway and wanted to make a left turn into it. He says he didn’t see your car heading in his direction. You can then ask yourself the following question while sitting in a wheelchair—“Is the law permitting the general use of marihuana for anyone over the age of eighteen a good law?”