Should marijuana...

Should marijuana be a medical option now?

Whats wrong with it? I mean if it helps you get better, then whats the problem.

I really don't know what is marijuana? Can somebody plz explain it? Is it a medicine? If it is and it helps to cure people so wht's the problem???

well its a drug and it can be addictive as well and be misused, but i dont think ita a lethal drug like cocaine or heroine is therefore i dont mind it being legalised

Originally posted by: MNMS

I really don't know what is marijuana? Can somebody plz explain it? Is it a medicine? If it is and it helps to cure people so wht's the problem???

its a type of drug that can be home grown and sometimes cancer patients can use it to numb their pain

marijuana (a.k.a cannabis or ganja) should only be legalized for those who need it medically.

this kind of drug gives only temporary euphoria, but later you simply crash and get addicted to it.

on the other hand, as far as I know, there isn't any real evidence that regulations against marijuana sales have acutally deterred consumption. in fact, it has just created a very wealthy underground market for this drug.

I have searched abt marijuana... ok i agree that it is sure given to cancer / AIDS patients to ease their pain and those wacky nausiatic conditions... but personally im not in favour of those medicines or products which cause addiction.

Why? Because in a recent medical report (i read on internet... do correct me if im wrong) any medicine/product which is addictive can and SURE causes the brain cells destruction, which is unfortunately nor recoverable. That includes from extensive use of sleeping pills to alchol.. and extend it to marijuana.. Yes i agree that marijuana MAY help in comforting the patient but only in the short term... the long term consequences are bad. Moreover its not a life-saving drug that is extremely necessary to use. Medical science is making progress day-by-day... im not a doctor but im sure there may be other ways to tackle the situation.

One more fact.. i read somewhere earlier that Queen Victoria of England used marijuana to ease her abdominal cramps. And that marijuana was surprisingly given by her doctor (i think she forced her doctor for that becoz the sentence was written in such a way, it gave the impression like the Queen was breaching her own country's law.. i don't know.. may be marijuana was banned at that time .. or not.. its just a guess)

I think there's a lot of misconceptions about marijuana. People say that you'll instantly get addicted to it the moment you take it. That's not necessarily true.

I have a cousin who injured her foot some time ago and when she went to the hopsital they gave her some marijuana and she much felt better. She did act a little funny when she was on it but she didn't get "addicted" or have any brain damage afterwards. Her foot healed and she was all better again. Nothing about her changed.

Here's a study done on Marijuana by the Insitution of Medicine. You can read it here.

Q: Is marijuana addictive?

A: "Compared to most other drugs ... dependence among marijuana users is relatively rare." [p. 94]

Drug Category	Proportion Of Users That Ever Became Dependent (%)
Tobacco	32
Alcohol	15
Marijuana (including hashish)	9
Cocaine	17
Heroin	23

"In summary, although few marijuana users develop dependence, some do. But they appear to be less likely to do so than users of other drugs (including alcohol and nicotine), and marijuana dependence appears to be less severe than dependence on other drugs." [p. 98]

I think if patients need to take some marijuana to avoid intense pain caused by their illness than I think thats perfectly fine. If it's going to help them than why not? Why would somone choose pain over pleasure anyway?

But if their treatmeant is going to be long-term than they should probably seek other alternatives to relieve their pain because there is a possibility that they can become dependent on it if they use it for a long period of time. But I don't think the hospital would let someone do that to themself. They would probably stop the treatment right away if their patients became really addictive or sick. They would give them the some other kind of pain killer even though it might not work as well.

I think as long as the person gets better from their original state by using marijuana I think its pefectly fine. If its going to help them get through their injury or illness than why not?

yeah true it is addictive but aint everything in life its how we use it that counts and u wont get addicted to it straight away like other drugs

Well |iami504| i do agree with you that u can't instantly get addicted with the use of marijuana. But its the same case with any other addictive product, u do need some time to get addicted. Along with that i didn't mean that the whole brain immediately gets damaged,its some of the brain cells that r damaged due to addiction and there is no remedy for it. And here is something i found on the internet. I would like to share this with all of u. Its a scientific report by the American Acedemy of Neurology published on March 14,2006:

Memory, speed of thinking and other cognitive abilities get worse over time with marijuana use, according to a new study published in the March 14, 2006, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The study found that frequent marijuana users performed worse than non-users on tests of cognitive abilities, including divided attention (ability to pay attention to more than one stimulus at a time) and verbal fluency (number of words generated within a time limit).

"We found that the longer people used marijuana, the more deterioration they had in these cognitive abilities, especially in the ability to learn and remember new information," said study author Lambros Messinis, PhD, of the Department of Neurology of the University Hospital of Patras in Patras, Greece. "In several areas, their abilities were significant enough to be considered impaired, with more impairment in the longer-term users than the shorter-term users."

The study involved people ages 17 to 49 taking part in a drug abuse treatment program in Athens, Greece. There were 20 long-term users, 20 shorter-term users and 24 control subjects who had used marijuana at least once in their lives but not more than 20 times and not in the past two years. Those who had used any other class of drugs, such as cocaine or stimulants, during the past year or for more than three months throughout their lives were not included in the study. Before the tests were performed, all participants had to abstain from marijuana for at least 24 hours.

The marijuana users performed worse in several cognitive domains, including delayed recall, recognition and executive functions of the brain. For example, on a test measuring the ability to make decisions, long-term users had 70 percent impaired performance, compared to 55 percent impaired performance for shorter-term users and 8 percent impaired performance for non-users.In a test where participants needed to remember a list of words that had been read to them earlier, the non-users remembered an average of 12 out of 15 words, the shorter-term users remembered an average of nine words and the long-term users remembered an average of seven words.

If we legalize marijuana it will send the message to people that it's ok to use it. More people will use the drug as the result.Also lets not forget the health risks....However the black market and violence assocaited with the sale of marijuana will be reduced.