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Essay on Medical Marijuana Should NOT Be Legal For Minors

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With the major and ongoing controversy of the legalization of marijuana, medical marijuana has been thrown into the limelight as an excuse as to why marijuana is “good.” But with medical marijuana’s supposed advancements, more and more doctors are prescribing it to anyone who claims to have a headache and now they are moving their clientele base to young children and teens who are not even old enough to know the long-term damage of the “medicine” their doctors are so willingly prescribing. While many doctors are beginning to jump on the medical weed train, others are continuing to speak against the effects; especially on minors. In order to prevent permanent damage to the young children, medical marijuana needs to be outlawed for anyone…show more content…
The director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse said that she was particularly worried about the risk of dependency because dependency was already high among minors and people with ADHD. The forms that Dr. Talleyrand makes his underage patients sign, agrees because it states that possible side effects include: mental slowness, memory problems, confusion, rapid heartbeat and can lead to dependency on the drug. With non-serious health problems, medical marijuana is too much of a risk for underage children. Not only are there very few reasons to prescribe the drug in the first place, but the mental and physical health of the young patient is compromised every time a doctor recommends marijuana as their medicine. According to the New York Times, researchers have linked the use of marijuana by adolescents to increased risk of psychosis and schizophrenia. The longer marijuana is taken, the more chances there are for it’s effects to start damaging the brain and impairing the patient in the way that complex tasks, are more difficult or impossible to do. Krista Medina, who is as assistant professor of psychology at the University of Cincinnati stated that not only are thinking abilities impaired, but adolescents brain activation
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