Harmful Legalization

Harmful Legalization

The United States government has seen fit to pass laws prohibiting the sale, manufacture, and possession of dangerous and destructive substances such as marijuana. In opportunistic and negligent haste, fringe aspects of society are seeking to undo laws regarding the restriction of marijuana. These factions have ignored the risks associated with marijuana, falsified information regarding its medical use, and ignore the greater issue with regards to the legalization of harmful substances.

LSD, angle dust, and cocaine have several things in common, not the least of which is like marijuana, they are each responsible for the deaths of countless individuals. While a subject will find it difficult to outright end his life with marijuana, it does cause harmful damage to both the user and those around him. Each marijuana cigarette is exponentially more damaging to the lungs of the smoker and those around him than a typical tobacco cigarette. Further, contrary to claims of the harmlessness of marijuana by some advocates, each time it is used, it obliterates a portion of brain cells that can never grow back. Also the active ingredient in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, has been linked to fetal damage, hormonal swings, a slight addiction rate, lower sperm counts and accelerated heart rates, none of which are anything approaching good health for a user. Other aspects besides a user's physical body suffer when he or she decides to use marijuana.

The emotional damage marijuana causes can be best summed up by a quote from researcher Damon Linker "...it (marijuana) does produce a pathology of the soul" (Linker). Everyone around the user suffers, because while he or she is in a drug-induced haze he or she neglects his or her friends, family and responsibilities. By escaping the subject simply dulls his or her pain from various troubles for a moment and does nothing to solve that which plagues him or her. Because of this, users will find themselves trapped within a vicious, unending cycle of getting high and forgetting, to coming down and needing the next fix, to getting high again. Upon realizing that the marijuana isn't what is required to take away their pain, some will turn to other harder drugs such as cocaine. There may be other reasons for people to start using marijuana, but there is an unacceptable large risk that some of these new users will experience the rush of marijuana and only seek more. This gateway effect is both simply too strong and unpredictable to unleash on an unprepared society.

There are members of our society who argue that the potential harms of marijuana are easily outweighed by the relief it can bring to those suffering from a variety of painful, incurable diseases.

What they will not mention is that in the last twenty years amazing leaps have been in the effectiveness and administration of painkillers. The red pill on the left side of the picture is of a pharmaceutical drug called Marinol. The active ingredient in Marinol is synthetic THC; this product has been found to relieve the nausea and vomiting that is associated with cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Marinol is also used to assist with the loss of appetite in AIDS patients. According to a recent news feature conducted by Fox News, there is no reason in this day in age a person should feel pain. We are able to take the most pitiful and suffering people and allow them to lead a normal life. The people who make up fraudulent disorders and symptoms and abuse prescriptions are more less likely to stop if marijuana is legalized; rather it will only make their job of finding a fix easier. This amounts to one more of several reason not to legalize