Legalization of Marijuana :: informative weed essay

Legalizing marijuana could lead to new medicinal purposes. This seems to be the strongest argument in legalizing this substance. Marijuana is a controlled substance, also known as a narcotic. More commonly named in the past, hemp plant or cannabis, is one of the oldest known psychoactive plants in humanity. The main ingredient in marijuana that causes the â€Å"high† people get form smoking it is known as THC (â€Å"tetrahydrocannabinols†). A native of central Asia, cannabis may have been cultivated as much as ten thousand years ago. It was cultivated in China by 4000 B.C. and in Turk Stan by 3000 B.C. It has long been used as a medicine in India, China, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South Africa, and South America. The first evidence of the medicinal use of cannabis was during the reign of the Chinese Emperor Chen Nung five thousand years ago. â€Å"It was recommended for malaria, constipation, and rheumatic pains (Grinspoon, Lester. 3) Since then many American research facilities have tried to cannabis find medicinal purposes for the drug. In the twentieth century has been proposed or shown to be useful as a medicine for many disorders and symptoms. As the results of various state research programs indicate, marijuana may be a remarkably effective substitute for standard drugs. â€Å"In one study of fifty-six patients who got no relief from standard anathematic agents, 78 percent became symptom-free when they smoked marijuana.† (Grinspoon, Lester. 25). Marijuana is also used for medicinal purposes in disorders such as: cancer chemotherapy, glaucoma, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, paraplegia, AIDS, chronic pain, rheumatic diseases, depression and other mood disorders. Though all of these have valid reason to legalize marijuana the FDA has yet to approve of it. "Today drugs must undergo rigorous, expensive, and time-consuming tests to win approval by the Food and Drug Administration for marketing as medicines." (Grinspoon, Lester. 226 ) Those who are suffering from various diseases are also excluded from the use of marijuana. If cannabis was made legal, there are several medicinal uses for it. The most recent is a study of the effects of marijuana on Multiple Sclerosis. Multiple Sclerosis is a degenerative disease of the central nervous system. Eventually victims of the disease may become totally paralyzed and forced to use a wheel chair. According to the BBC news, (an English news website), about 200 people have signed up to take part in the first national study of the effects of this narcotic on the disease.