A drug or a healer?
Weed. Marijuana. Dope. Cannabis. Grass by any other name is still pot. But is this gateway drug leading to medical breakthroughs?
This debate over legalizing marijuana is one that has raged across the American countryside, from pot patrons and doctors to the overage American. Some feel that pot is a drug and nothing more. They note the effects this substance has on people, the loss of ambition and its addictive nature. Another fear is that legalizing pot will increase the crime rate and the accessibility of drugs to the youth. They ask, how can anyone consider legalizing something we have arrested people for throughout history?
Others see marijuana as more than a drug. They think that it could be used in a medical practice. Though they do not condone using pot recreationally and agree there are harmful effects, they also see that it could act as a pain reliever in medicine and help ailing patients cope. Many also believe that crime rates will decrease because people will have more access to it and it will not need to rely on a dangerous subculture.
This is issue is blazing, and all of America can only wait and see. But what do you think: Drug or Medicine?
December 15th, 2008 at 5:53 am
Bottom line is, there are 2 angles to the legality of cannabis and whether or not it should be legalized. First, cannabis helps millions of people as a medicine, and should at the very least be rescheduled as a beneficial medicine available to all who need it. Doctors know better than the lawyers who are against it, whether it helps or hurts, and need to have the power to prescribe it. Second, as a recreational drug, it has been proven to not affect motor coordination as much as legal drugs such as alcohol does, and does not destroy the liver like alcohol abuse does. Yes, it can and does harm the lungs, but can be eaten. IT IS A PLANT and we should not and can not make Mother Nature illegal. There is a lot more to the argument of the legality and benefits/consequences of cannabis, but one of the stronger points for legalizion of cannabis altogether would be increased tax revenues for the government if it were taxed and regulated, simultaneously opening the doors for farmers as the demand would grow (no pun intended) for industrial hemp and cannabis as a medicine. I”ll stop here but it should never have been illegal in the first place.