Facts About Marijuana

Marijuana has been debated for many years with regards to whether it is a recreational drug that is dangerous or not. With more and more states legalizing marijuana for recreational use, medical use, or both it is important to understand certain facts about the drug. There are many who say it is not as bad or the same as other legal substances such as tobacco or alcohol. There are uses for marijuana medically as well for people with a disability or with injuries who use it for pain. There are also statistics that shows marijuana is linked to less vehicle accidents than other substances. There are also economic benefits to legalizing marijuana based off statistics from Colorado.

What is Marijuana and the Uses It Has

Marijuana according to NIDA, “Marijuana refers to the dried leaves, flowers, stems, and seeds from the hemp plant, Cannabis sativa. The plant contains the mind-altering chemical delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and other related compounds” (2017). This means marijuana is a natural substance from a plant and the THC naturally causes a “high”. The two reasons people use the drug is for either recreational use or for a medical use.

Recreational use involves inhaling the smoke it creates with a hand-rolled cigarette for example, inhaling the vapor with a vaporizer, or ingesting marijuana in food (NIDA, 2017). The purposes for these different methods of intaking the drug is to receive the “high” similarly to people drinking alcohol for its affects. Using medical marijuana involves using “the whole unprocessed marijuana plant or its basic extracts to treat a disease or symptom” (NIDA, 2015). This means people use marijuana through different methods or even as a pill with or without the THC. Using marijuana without the THC involves extracting the THC from the plant so people do not experience the “high” associated with the drug. Using it medically can have some benefits such as helping with a disease or with pain management.

The Legality of Marijuana

With many states legalizing marijuana, the legality of the drug has become confusing with knowing where people can use it. Marijuana is illegal federally and according to NCSL, it is “classified as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act” meaning that it is considered a substance with high dependency with no medical use (2017, March 1). This means federally people are not allowed use marijuana for recreational or medical use. This also means people are not allowed to use marijuana in states that have not legalized it.

According to Governing, eight states have legalized recreational use including Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, Nevada, and Washington (2017). 21 states have legalized marijuana for medical use including Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont (Governing, 2017).

Even though many states have legalized marijuana for medical use or recreational use, it is complicated by the Supremacy Clause. The Supremacy Clause is in Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution, which says federal laws take precedence over state laws (Cornell, n.d.) This means that the federal government can enforce the law in states that have legalized marijuana if it wants to. This law could possibly threaten legalization in many states if the federal government decided to enforce the law.

Benefits and Risks

There are several benefits to medical marijuana or even recreational marijuana if it is pure marijuana without chemicals and is not smoked, which means it needs to be ingested through other methods. One benefit is marijuana can help people with certain diseases or it can help for pain management. According to NCSL, there is scientific data that shows there is therapeutic value with mostly THC to help with pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation as well as reliving some symptoms of HIV/AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, and multiple sclerosis. (2017, March 1).

With these benefits of marijuana, there are many diseases and conditions in which people suffer from. According to the NIH, there are THC-based medication used to decrease nausea for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and to increase people’s appetite who suffer from wasting diseases such as AIDS (NIH, 2017). These are two specific types of diseases medical marijuana can help showing it has a good use. There is also medication in other countries that help with spasticity and neuropathic pain from multiple sclerosis, and the other chemical in marijuana called cannabidiol can be used in treatments for seizure disorders (NIH, 2017).

Like any drug there are some risks involved with using marijuana with most risks involving smoking it, like with cigarettes increasing the chances of cancer or alcohol increasing the chances for liver diseases. According to NIH, after a few minutes of smoking marijuana “a person’s heart rate speeds up, the breathing passages relax and become enlarged, and blood vessels in the eyes expand” (2017). There is limited evidence showing risk of heart attack increasing almost five times for the first hour after smoking due to it increasing blood pressure and heart rate (NIH, 2017). Although the same could be said about drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes because both also increase blood pressure and heart rate.

There are different effects marijuana can have, which can change depending on the person where some people feel unpleasant effects and some marijuana related health problems like dizziness, dry mouth, slowed reaction, distorted sense of time, paranoia, anxiety, depression (n.d.). It is worth noting that people who use marijuana may not experience all of these symptoms, may experience most, or may not feel any at all.

There many statistics that show there are affects to using marijuana but not as bad as other substances like tobacco and alcohol. According to Tims (2014), 9 percent of people using marijuana become addicted whereas “32 percent of tobacco users and 15 percent of alcohol users become addicted”. This means that there are cases of people getting addicted to marijuana but at a much less rate compared to tobacco and alcohol. There have been no overdoses from marijuana (Bellware, 2016). To compare there are about 17,000 overdose deaths caused by prescription Opioid pain relievers (NIH, n.d.), Cigarette smoking causes more than 480,000 deaths, alcohol causes about 88,000 deaths. This means that marijuana use is much safer compared to other substances because there have been no overdoses from marijuana.

Another way to judge if marijuana is less dangerous than other substances is with deaths in traffic accidents. Marijuana is responsible for 12 percent of traffic related deaths (Schmitz and Woodyard, 2014) and alcohol causes 31 percentage of traffic related deaths (CDC, January 26). This means that it is dangerous to drive a vehicle after smoking or eating marijuana and drinking alcohol because people have died from it. These two stats do show that marijuana causes less deaths than alcohol with driving accidents.

Benefits of Legalization

There are several benefits to legalizing marijuana that have more to do with economic benefits but there are other ones as well. One benefit is it gives people more freedom because it is the same or better than other legal substances like alcohol and tobacco. The previous section shows this because several facts shows marijuana has similar symptoms and less deaths associated it than other legal substances. This does not mean marijuana should have no regulations because it does cause accidents, which means it should have similar regulations to alcohol.

Another benefit is it can boost the economy because according to Ingraham (2016) in Colorado where recreational and medical use are both legal, marijuana has created 18,000 new jobs and created “$2.4 billion in economic activity” in 2015. This shows that in one state alone marijuana created thousands of jobs and created a multi-billion-dollar industry. This shows that if marijuana is legalized for every state with both recreational and medical use, it could boost the economy. With this there could be more revenue for the government to pay for certain policies from taxes on the marijuana industry similar to the tobacco and alcohol industry. Another way legalization can help the economy is with possibly less money going into enforcing the law and paying for all the people in jail because of marijuana.

Conclusion

Marijuana legalization has been debated for many years and with legalization in several states, it will continue to be debated. Marijuana is a drug people can use for recreational and medical use and there are many effects marijuana with THC can have like other substances such as alcohol ot tobacco. Marijuana has no overdoses associated with it unlike other substances and it does cause deaths due to traffic accidents but at a much less percentage than alcohol. There are many benefits to legalizing marijuana from medical benefits to economic benefits. With more than half of states having some forms of legalization whether it is medically or recreationally, it seems it could be legalized federally eventually.

References

Bellware, K (2016, April 20). Here’s How Many People Have Fatally Overdosed On Marijuana. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/marijuana-overdose-deaths_us_5716468ee4b0060ccda452ad

CDC (2016, January 26). Injury Prevention and Control: Motor Vehicle Safrty. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html

CDC (2016). Smoking and Tobacco Use. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/effects_cig_smoking/

Cornell (n.d.) Supremacy Clause. Retrieved from https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/supremacy_clause

Governing (2017). State Marijuana Laws in 2016 Map. Retrieved from http://www.governing.com/gov-data/state-marijuana-laws-map-medical-recreational.html

Ingraham, C. (2016, October 31). The $2.4 Billion Marijuana Industry Created Over 18,000 New Jobs in Colorado Last Year.Retrieved from http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-colorado-marijuana-industry-20161031-story.html

NIH (2017, February). Alcohol Facts and Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics

NIH (n.d.). Overdose Death Rates. Retrieved from https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates

NIH (2017). Is Marijuana Safe and Effective as Medicine? Retrieved from https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/letter-director

NCSL (2017, March 1). State Medical Marijuana Laws. Retrieved from http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/state-medical-marijuana-laws.aspx

NIDA (2015). Is Marijuana Medicine? Retrieved from https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/marijuana-medicine

NIDA (2017). Marijuana. Retrieved fromhttps://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/marijuana

Schmitz, M, Woodyard, C. (2014, June 9). Marijuana Playing Larger Role in Fatal Crashes. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/06/09/marijuana-accidents/10219119/

Tims, D. (2014, June 14). Is Marijuana Less Addictive Than Both Alcohol and Tobacco? Retrieved from http://www.politifact.com/oregon/statements/2014/jun/04/earl-blumenauer/marijuana-less-addictive-both-alcohol-and-tobacco/

WebMD (n.d.). How Does Marijuana Affect You? Retrieved from http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/marijuana-use-and-its-effects#1