Medical Marijuana Research Paper

Brandon Hall

Robert Zackowski

English 101 2:00 MWF

12/2/15

Whether or not medical marijuana should be used as a medicine.

        When it comes to the legalization of marijuana there were always a few key things that the government had to put into consideration when making the decision to make it legal. Because marijuana was used in the past for various things besides to get high off of. Scientist and the FDA decided to do research using medical marijuana. For the symptoms cannabis was used to treat it was effective, like weight loss, sleep problems, and appetite loss. There are manty different illnesses that marijuana can treat.

        In the first source I looked at called 4 Burning Questions about Medical Marijuana by Thomas R. Bundy, III, it asks four important questions that always come up when considering legalizing marijuana. Because of certain laws imposed in states that haven’t legalized marijuana yet people will ask about their jobs being affected by it if they were to use medical marijuana. “Can employers prohibit employees from using medical marijuana?” an important question asked in this article. Although one would think that it would have an effect in how they would do the task they are assigned, certain rules are imposed so they won’t be under the influence while at work. Using medical marijuana has its negative effects but so does every other prescription drug.  If the employee isn’t using it during work it shouldn’t be a problem and the employer shouldn’t have the right to take away or discriminate against these employees. When working with the federal government the rules are very strict and employees are prohibited from using marijuana due to The Drug Free Workplace Act (DFWA). They want to be able to regulate this and are working on this in the “highest court”. If an employee was to have a disability that required medical marijuana the employer would not be allowed to discriminate against that employee.  Due to “The Americans with Disabilities Act

(ADA) prohibits discrimination against employees with disabilities, i.e., physical or mental impairments that substantially limit major life activities. Employees who legally use prescribed drugs to treat a disability are generally protected under the ADA.”

        Though marijuana has been proven to help in some cases, it does have its down sides. When it comes to smoking marijuana which is the most common and easy way of consumption, people inhale the burnt plant which is much like smoking tobacco. According to this scholarly article I read called “Public Health Effects of Medical Marijuana Legalization in Colorado” by Jonathan M. Davis. American Journal of Preventive Medicine” the number of calls the poison center increased dramatically. Stated in the text, “After 2009, poison center calls increased 0.8% per month (95% CI=0.2, 1.4, p<0.01). Poison center calls also increased 56% (95% CI=49%, 63%, p<0.001) in the period following the policy change.”  These calls were due to people smoking marijuana and there being high metals present in the buds from the soil. There are a number of short term effects that come with smoking marijuana. First talked about is memory loss, lack of motivation and learning difficulties.

Using marijuana as treatment at a young age can cause bad habits like addiction, dependence early. Although this can happen at any age there are a lot of cases where children have tried everything so they have to turn to medical marijuana for an answer. In this article called “The case for medical marijuana in epilepsy” it talks about a young girl named charlotte that had epilepsy. Before getting on medical marijuana treatment she had up to 50 seizures per day. Once she was using the medicine for a few weeks they noticed a change in the amount of seizures she was having. Talking about a certain strain of marijuana used by Charlotte, author Edward Maa writes “This extract, slowly titrated over weeks and given in conjunction with her existing antiepileptic drug regimen, reduced Charlotte’s seizure frequency from nearly 50 convulsive seizures per day to now 2–3 nocturnal convulsions per month.” Being only 5 years old her parents had to make sure that they have tried everything before trying this type of treatment. Little did they know that they answer to Charlottes problems were in what have been looked at as such a bad thing since 1930. They slowly weaned Charlotte of the drug after a while as her seizures started to stop.