Why Medicinal Marijuana Should Be Administered
If it was not for the local state laws allowing dispensaries such as the SR-71 in California, a lot of patients needing treatment for diseases such as HIV, glaucoma and chronic pain would be suffering a lot more.
It seems cannabis was overseen as a major medical substance by the U.S. Government until about 15 years ago when on November 5th 1996, proposition 215 was passed in California to allow medicinal marijuana to be prescribed to patients for ailments such as Aids, anorexia, cancer and chronic pain. This was seen as a major breakthrough in the fight to see Marijuana for its medicinal values and not a recreational drug.
Since 1996 no fewer than 18 states have followed suite and now allow the practice of Marijuana as a prescribed drug. These states include:
- Alaska
- Arizona
- California
- Colorado
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Hawaii
- Maine
- Maryland
- Michigan
- Montana
- Nevada
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- Oregon
- Rhode Island
- Vermont
- Washington
Although these states allow the use of prescribed Marijuana, some of these states also allow the use of recreational Marijuana, having it De-criminalized. Each state differs though, with the use of marijuana and the reasons for its use been dependent on local state laws. Some states allow you to grow your own marijuana if you are a medical marijuana user whereas most states do not.
So why don't all states follow suite? Well unfortunately some state health officials still see Marijuana as a grey area. Not knowing the drugs full short-term and long-term psychological effects makes marijuana a very political substance, and, do not want to be the ones who sanctioned the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.
Study's show that Marijuana has positive effect on prescribed users, with it been used for breaking harder addictions such as alcoholism, addiction to heroin and cocaine. Marijuana can act as a substitute but with far less withdrawal symptoms, same goes with for relieving pain, the user found it of great benefit to themselves and their illness relief and when the prescription finally ended found virtually no dependency to the drug.
But on the other hand, experts say that with the strains of marijuana becoming more potent it will only be a matter of time before the real psychological effects of the drug will come to light. Arguments that marijuana causes long term symptoms such as paranoia and psychological dependency only adds to the confusion of what marijuana is REALLY all about.
Either way, if marijuana was to be stopped as a prescribed medicine then a lot of patients would inevitably end up feeling a lot more pain than they would if they were prescribed marijuana. And for the Government saying that this is a bad drug, their $15 billion crops of medicinal marijuana, the US's number one cash crop, surely says that it does have value, if not to the patient then to the Governments money men at least.
