The United States is currently struggling to decide whether or not marijuana ought to be used as medication. This seems like a pretty tough problem and houses of government all over the country have grappled with the issue. I think this is all a bit silly. The only reason this is even an issue is because marijuana has a certain negative connotation in our society. The google search “why medical marijuana should be illegal” yielded a large list of conservative political websites plump with scary headlines and photos of President Obama with silly expressions on his face. After wading through a few I decided a list of five reasons from townhall.com seemed the most practical and reputable. Here I will look at their five reasons and talk about how marijuana can be compared to the traditional treatment for chronic pain, opiates (vicodin, oxycodone etc.) since this is the most common reason for medical marijuana use. Here I will note I gathered all of this information from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Below this can be found a block quote from Dr. Pinsky which basically says that for a small subset of the population marijuana is extremely addictive. It is true that marijuana can be addictive and about 1 in 11 people who try marijuana become addicted. While marijuana addiction could lead to an unfortunate life style, there are currently an estimated 2.1 million Americans with abuse and dependency issues related to prescription opiates. While the number of people in the United States addicted to marijuana is much larger (4.6 million) this number is stable whereas the number of people addicted to prescription opiates is on the rise. Also it is important to point out that opiates are considered to be addictive; for everyone.
No facts needed here, remember we need to think about marijuana as medication, not a common street drug. Fear mongering about recreational marijuana use has nothing to do with medical marijuana. Marijuana is prescribed just like any other medications and therefore we can think of possible back door illicit use as being just as common as back door illicit use of prescription opiates, which might be more common than you would think. Overdose deaths due to prescription opioid pain relievers have more than tripled in the past 20 years, escalating to 16,651 deaths in the United States in 2010.
So let me just say that this is a valid point, but I would rather have 8 less IQ points than be dead from lung cancer, but that’s just me. Also, cigarettes have nothing to do with medical marijuana, no one is prescribed a pack of Marlboro Reds for chronic pain. Long term effects of prescription opiate abuse are not great. Opiates bind to opiate receptors and when they are used on a habitual basis your body stops producing its own opiates, so when a person attempts to stop taking them they can experience severe withdrawal. Also after a while addicts develop a very high tolerance for opiates, so if they do manage to stop, their tolerance will drop quickly. This means that if they start abusing pain medication again they are prone to overdose which often results in death. So I guess if I had to choose one of the two methods for pain treatment to become addicted to I’d probably take the 8 IQ points.
First off, the first two points about how toxic the smoke is are completely irrelevant because medical marijuana is available in the form of edible products that contain cannabis oil, not to mention that they aren’t even close to completely accurate. I found no mention of temporary sterility from the use of marijuana. It is true that babies born from mothers who used marijuana had higher rates of mental birth defects including attention and communication issues. That being said babies born from mothers who abused opiates during their pregnancy are also born with birth defects, this is referred to as NAS and the rate among newborns increased by over 300% between 200 and 2009. Also nobody is suggesting you use meth or crack for your pain, just saying.
I won’t say that any of that isn’t true, mostly because I can’t because it is just random scenarios not at all based in any information (kind of like those funny stoner movies). Let’s now look at a worst case scenario for an opiate addict since that is what they did for marijuana addict. If they don’t die of an overdose, which a lot of people do (44 every day in the US according to the CDC), they often become addicted to other opiates like heroin when they can no longer afford or obtain prescription medication. I think pop culture has taught us enough about heroin addiction. This graphic from the NIDA sums it up pretty well.
In short, we need to look at medical marijuana for what it is, medication. We need to compare it to other prescription options and look at the advantages and disadvantages of all pain medication fairly.
If you’re interested this is the link to the website I looked at, and this is the link to my source for information.
Why Medical Marijuana Should (not) Be Illegal
