preview

Should Marijuana Be Legal For Medical Purposes?

Good Essays

Marijuana has shown itself and its derivatives to be profoundly successful in treating a multitude of diseases, their symptoms or side effects of their treatments. Marijuana should be reclassified from Schedule 1 agent and more studies done into the other possible medical uses for this drug. Opposition to the idea of making medical marijuana legal argue that the drug is dangerous. It can’t be more dangerous than the opioids and other more dangerous drugs already available by prescription. In states where medical marijuana is legal, the statistics of drug overdose deaths have dropped as much as twenty-five percent. Patients are suffering, a possible solution to that suffering is available; let’s make medical marijuana legal.
Marijuana …show more content…

While chemo induced vomiting is often responsive to current medications, nausea can be resistant to the available drugs. As this type of nausea can be long lasting and pervasive it sometimes reaches levels that causes patients to end lifesaving chemo treatments (Parker et al., 2011). If medical marijuana enables one patient to continue these lifesaving treatments, where existing medications cannot; legalization is justified.
What could be more heart rending than watching a child suffer the severe pain and side effects of cancer and its treatments? In Israel, children aged three to thirteen were given a small dose of an edible oil made from the THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, extracted from the resin of cannabis. The drug was administered two hours before undergoing chemotherapy, continuing every six hours for twenty-four hours. Vomiting was completely eliminated. Two patients exhibited mild irritability (Abrahamov, Abrahamov, & Mechoulam, 1995). What parent can hold their sick child knowing a treatment option exists, but is illegal to obtain, and not demand that things change?
Data suggests cannabis and its derivatives are not only successful in treating the side effects of chemotherapy, it may play a role in cell survival or death in the human body influenced by the dosing levels (Guzmán, Sanchez, &

Get Access