LEGALIZING MEDICAL MARIJUANA

The Ethical Issues of Legalizing Marijuana for Medical and Recreational Purposes

The Ethical Issues of Legalizing Marijuana for Medical and Recreational Purposes

Marijuana has been utilized extensively as a medical remedy for more than five thousand years. In the early 1900s, health usage of marijuana started to decline with the advent of alternate drugs. Injectable opiates and synthetic pharmaceuticals such as aspirin and barbiturates started to replace marijuana as the physician's pharmaceutical of choice in the twentieth-century, as their results proved to be more reliable than the occasionally erratic effects of the hard-to-dose potencies of marijuana (Grinspoon, 1995). The Marijuana levy proceed of 1937 made cannabis so expensive to get that its usage as a health remedy in the U.S. came to a halt. Although now illicit in the U.S., marijuana extends to be utilized for both health and recreational reasons by numerous Americans. There is a kind of attitudes both for and against the re-legalization of marijuana today. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the legalization debate is if marijuana should be legalized for medical purposes.

All drugs, both prescription and non-prescription, are federally arranged' by the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency). A drug's arranging under Federal law is very resolute "according to [its] consequences, medical values, and promise for abuse" (Claim V). In this classification scheme, marijuana is an agenda I drug, grouped with heroin, LSD, hashish, methaqualone, and designer drugs. These are drugs having "unpredictable consequences, and [causing] critical psychological or personal dependence, or death" (Claim V).

A nearer investigation of the DEA's government arranging scheme reveals that, according to diverse investigations by physicians on both edges of the legalization argument, marijuana does not rendezvous the obligations of an agenda I pharmaceutical, but not those of agenda II. The difference between the two categories is that agenda I pharmaceuticals may lead to death, while those on Schedule II are less expected to do so. Proponents of legalization cite information that shows marijuana is a somewhat protected" drug. "There is no renowned case of overdose; on the basis of animal forms, the ratio of lethal to productive dose is 40,000 to 1" (Grinspoon, 1995). Even some adversaries of marijuana legalization support reclassification. Two physicians, in a widely circulated attitudes piece deserving "Marijuana Smoking as surgery: A fiendish Hoax", wrote; "While the reclassification of THC to agenda II might be understandable, this would not be the result of smoking the crude pharmaceutical marijuana, which would as a outcome become more available and more gladly redirected for non-medical use" (Nahas, 2005). Although this evidence apparently does not support the legalization of marijuana, it best features one of numerous discrepancies that cloud this smoky debate.

Lester Grinspoon, MD, is a proponent of the health legalization and re-classification of marijuana. In the periodical of the American health Association, Dr. Grinspoon composed an item deserving "A Plea for Reconsideration". In this plea, Grinspoon suggests that marijuana should be reclassified to a Schedule II class pharmaceutical, so that it might be lawfully ...