Cannabis Creates Contingency

Many very well known people openly talk about using marijuana for use to relieve pain.  Morgan Freeman, a world renowned film director, actor, and narrator is a full supporter of the use of the drug from personal experience.  He has fibromyalgia pain in his arm and claims that the only way he can relieve that pain is from the use of marijuana.  More and more people are using the drug and depending on it for reason of pain and it has been proven to help many people in our country and worldwide.  Marijuana is a very useful substance that can seriously benefit the people that truly do need it.  Overall, the benefits outway the doubts and, in turn, it can help everybody. 

Since marijuana can help relieve pain and deal with harsh injuries, it can be a very helpful substance to use when dealing with sports-related injuries.  Using prescribed drugs such as muscle relaxants, analgesics, and opiate narcotics can have many terrible side effects.  This next piece is a person dealing with the problem first hand.  He is former professional football player, Nate Jackson.  “‘It helped the pain. It helped my mind get away from the game. I think it allowed me not to dive too far down into the opioid [pain-killing drugs]’" (“Why Won’t the Sports”).  Now, we will be going to see why this matters.

Medical marijuana can relieve very painful sports injuries instead of taking highly addictive drugs that can lead to many more complications.  Supporting these pieces of evidence, we see that pain-killing drugs can be very harmful and have many, very severe side-effects.  The quote is from former NFL football player, Nate Jackson.  He is a prime example of a person who suffered many minor and major injuries from a high-impact sport and because of that, he used marijuana to soothe his pain.  He illegally used the drug like many patients seeking to use marijuana as a more natural pain-killer than other drugs.  But he felt that he had to because marijuana is only legal in most places if received through a very drawn-out process.  This forced him to illegally use the drug instead of resorting to the powerful, synthetic pain-killers that many people feel as the only option. 

Marijuana doesn’t only help our country through helping with physical problems but also with costs of enforcing and selling the drug.  “States together spent somewhere around $3.6 billion enforcing marijuana possession laws in 2010” (Bradford).  We can also do things to create an income for our government from the legalization of the drug.  Through legalizing marijuana, our state and federal governments would collect a total of $8.6 billion each year.  This is a huge reason why we need the legalization of the drug.

Our country’s government could easily benefit from the legalization of marijuana.  Our country is spending too much money on enforcing the laws for marijuana usage.  This is a drug that is very hard to stop from circulating our country and frankly, there are many more things that are worse than the use of marijuana.  We have so much crime that needs to be stopped from marijuana and none of it is.  Truly, it isn’t worth it. Our government could also benefit greatly from the legalization of the drug through the taxes they collect. It would go towards helping the common goods.  We wouldn’t have to be as secure at our borders because if people brought the drug into the country, it wouldn’t be illegal.  We need more and more ways to generate money in our country and trying to implement a law that is nearly impossible to implement is just a waste of time and money.  There are many, many more benefits as we will see.

Marijuana usage has been proven to help with diseases and disorders such as the disorder of epilepsy.  “Twenty-four percent of all subjects believed marijuana was an effective therapy for epilepsy” (“Is Marijuana an Effective”).  People who have epilepsy often try many different medicines, and prescriptions, along with other things that don’t work nearly as well as marijuana.  The content in the drug can calm the brain of people who have epilepsy.  People are struggling with other drugs and succeeding with marijuana and our medications are changing because of it.

Marijuana can be very helpful and effective in reducing the severity of seizures.  There are many epilepsy patients that have used many different drugs to find a solution but, as we have seen, twenty-four percent of people in a survey at the University of Alberta in 2004 believe marijuana is an adequate and effective solution to help epilepsy patients.  Only twenty one percent of people in that survey had tried to use marijuana as a solution before so I am sure that there would be many more than a quarter of those in the survey that thought marijuana is an effective drug.  Epilepsy is a very severe disorder that is traumatic for anybody who knows a person or people who have it.  If we legalize the drug, people can have easy access to the it without having to go through such a long process. 

Marijuana can also be used for other diseases and disorders such as PTSD and Alzheimer’s Disease.  “By aiding in memory extinction, marijuana could help patients reduce their association between stimuli (perhaps loud noises or stress) and the traumatic situations in their past” (“General Use of Cannabis”).  Also, studies suggest that THC, the main component in marijuana, can stop help people with Alzheimer’s Disease.  The THC can stop or slow the progression of the disease and its characteristics through lowering amyloid levels.

The main component in THC can be very helpful in the slowing the development of Alzheimer’s and help with PTSD patients by fading their memory.  There are many disorders and diseases that marijuana can help treat including PTSD and Alzheimer's.  The content in the drug can definitely be harmful but the benefits outway the doubts when it comes to how it affects people experiencing pain emotionally and physically.  Although marijuana can make you experience memory loss, it takes away the nasty thoughts that PTSD patients struggle with every moment of every day.  If using marijuana can help people so much, then we should legalize it.  Even though there are bad things that come out of using the drug, people have to remember that there are flaws in everything.

Marijuana is a drug that shouldn’t be legalized.  Many people feel that there are many more negative effects to the drug than positives ones.  They feel that it is used for recreational use that needs to be stopped.  However, many people can use the drug to help them and it helps them more than it burdens others. There are benefits that truly do outway the doubts in the drug’s legalization and we should just embrace that. 

So, why should marijuana be illegal?  Is it really benefitting us to protect our country from a drug that has so many benefits?  We are too caught up on the recreational overuse of the drug and not the good that can come from it.  Many more drugs used in our country are not outlawed as severely as marijuana when marijuana has more advantages than the stronger, more powerful drugs that are found in prescribed painkillers and opiate drugs.  So, should marijuana really be illegal?

Works Cited
Bradford, Harry. "Marijuana Law Enforcement Cost States An Estimated $3.6 Billion In 2010: ACLU." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 26 May 2015.
"CURE Epilepsy: Research: Spotlight on CBD." CURE Epilepsy: Research: Spotlight on CBD. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2015.
Fairchild, Caroline. "Legalizing Marijuana Would Generate Billions In Additional Tax Revenue Annually." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 26 May 2015.
"General Use of Cannabis for PTSD Symptoms." General Use of Cannabis for PTSD Symptoms. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2015.
"Is Marijuana an Effective Treatment for Epilepsy (Seizures)? - Medical Marijuana - ProCon.org." ProConorg Headlines. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2015.
"Marijuana Fights Alzheimer's Disease, New Study Indicates." Smell the Truth. N.p., 29 Nov. 2014. Web. 26 May 2015.
"Medical Cannabis Is Great For Sports Injuries & Active Lifestyles." Toke of the Town. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2015.
"Why Won't the Sports World Embrace Medical Marijuana?" SportsonEarth.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2015.
Gajewski, Ryan. "Morgan Freeman Defends His Marijuana Use: "I'll Eat It, Drink It, Smoke It, Snort It"" The Hollywood Reporter. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 May 2015.