The Need for Weed

Essay by Anonymous UserUniversity, Master'sA, February 1997

download word file, 4 pages 4.5 1 reviews

Just in, California has become the first state to legalize pot! Unfortunately, for all you proud owners of a two-foot-bong or a three-inch bowl, you must have a prescription from a medical doctor before you light up. Perhaps it's only a crack in the ice, but it is a start to a long-awaited, controversial issue that needs to be touched upon again.

        In the fall of 1996, Proposition 215 was passed in California, legalizing the medical use of marijuana. Even though the majority (56%) voted to pass 215, opponents plan to continue to fight the measure. It was also so in Arizona, where Proposition 200, the Drug Medicalization, Prevention, and Control Act, won 65% of the vote. It says that Arizona's doctors can prescribe marijuana, heroin, and LSD for patients when there is 'medicinal value' (California 62). The passing of these two propositions has also helped the release of prisoners convicted of drug possession (---).

With jail capacity already overflowing, if you were to lock up a dealer, you therefore create a job opening.

        Bob Randall, president of the Alliance for the Cannabis Therapeutics, a Washington-based patients' right group, says as many as five-million sick Americans might benefit from the legal access to marijuana. Marijuana has been found to: relieve nausea and stimulate appetite in people with cancer and AIDS, control muscle spasms among people with multiple sclerosis and other neurological disorder, reduce eye pressure among people with glaucoma, and some

say it also controls seizures, eases chronic pain, and relieves depression. Dr. Ernest Rosenbaum, a San Francisco cancer specialist, says he and many doctors quietly recommend marijuana to patients who didn't respond to other medications. A 1991 Harvard study found that about 40 % of cancer specialists surveyed had recommended marijuana to relieve chemotherapy nausea, and about 48% said...