Medical Use of Marijuana

Marijuana has been utilized extensively as a health remedy for more than five thousand years. In the early 1900s, medical usage of marijuana began to down turn with the advent of alternative drugs. Injectable opiates and synthetic drugs such as aspirin and barbiturates started to restore marijuana as the physician's pharmaceutical of choice in the twentieth-century, as their results verified to be more consistent than the sometimes erratic consequences of the hard-to-dose potencies of marijuana. The Marijuana levy proceed of 1937 made cannabis so expensive to get that its usage as a medical remedy in the U.S. came to a halt. Although now illegal in the U.S., marijuana extends to be utilized for both medical and recreational reasons by many 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 whether marijuana should be legalized for medical purposes (Vlahas, 16).

All pharmaceuticals, both prescription and non-prescription, are federally arranged' by the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency). A drug's arranging under Federal regulation is determined, according to [its] consequences, health benefits, and promise for abuse. In this classification scheme, marijuana is a Schedule I drug, grouped with heroin, LSD, hashish, methaqualone, and designer drugs. These are pharmaceuticals having unpredictable consequences, and [causing] severe psychological or physical dependence, or death.

A closer investigation of the DEA's Federal Scheduling scheme discloses that, according to diverse investigations by physicians on both edges of the legalization argument, marijuana does not rendezvous the requirements of an agenda I drug, but not those of agenda II. The difference between the two categories is that agenda I pharmaceuticals may lead to death, while those on agenda II are less expected to do so. Proponents of legalization cite data 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 to1. Even some opponents of marijuana legalization support reclassification. Two physicians, in a broadly distributed attitudes part 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 outcome of fuming the crude pharmaceutical marijuana, which would as an outcome become more available and more gladly diverted for non-medical use. 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 medical legalization and re-classification of marijuana. In the periodical of the American health Association, Dr. Grinspoon composed an article 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 prescribed. He writes:

In a 1990 survey, 44% of oncologists said they had proposed that a persevering fumes marihuana for respite of the nausea induced by chemotherapy. If marihuana were actually unsafe for use under medical ...