Increasing use of medical marijuana

Medical Use of Marijuana
Increasing use of medical marijuana
Having looked at the various areas that medical marijuana has been brought into use and the various forms in which marijuana is administered, it is also important to take note of the various challenges that come with it. There have been various researches that have been conducted that covers the medical as well as the ethical side of the medicinal marijuana, and there have been a dilemma in the balance of the two sides on whether to institutionalize the drug or to stop it, and even on whether the medicinal use can be made to work without the proneness to abuse as is the case at the moment.
Medicinal marijuana has neither medical nor ethical standing within the contemporary society where drug abuse is one of the biggest worries of governments across the world and the alternative medicines that medical research can appropriately come up with.
There are various factors that point at devastating effects and after-effects of marijuana use be it for medical purposes or not. These reasons have left a trail of destructions some of which are non-redeemable. The calls for medical use of marijuana are not anything new in the field of medicine particularly taking into account the past errors with more lethal drugs. For instance, the past president for California Narcotic Officers Association Ronald E. Brooks (2010) submitted that heroine was initially developed to act as a non-addicting analgesic that would effectively replace morphine and the devastating results are now known all over. Sigmund Freud made the same mistake by indicating that cocaine was a non-addictive and quite harmless drug, the same mistake replicated in 1980s by Dr. Lester Grinspoon when he publicly pronounced cocaine to be as harmless and safe to use as aspirin, the society now knows the truth about both. These are mistakes that must not be repeated with marijuana bearing that the theory surrounding the successful use and non-addictive use of marijuana are based on anecdotal circumstances and are not universally applicable. This must not be allowed on the background of the devastations that cocaine and heroin, hitherto thought to be non-addictive, have brought to the society at large.
Ethical effects
The long-term use of marijuana leads to addiction hence overweighing the medicinal use of it. The user will have a compulsive need to use the drug even if they know the negative effects in school, at work, at school even in the recreational activities. According to the National Institute on Drugs Abuse (2010), 9% of the long-term users of marijuana end up being addicted with the percentage increasing depending on the age at which the person starts smoking to 17% among those who start it while still young and 25-50% among those who use the drug daily. These create an ethical dilemma on whether the medicinal values are worth the try or an alternative non-addictive means should be used.
Health effects
It is indicated that young users of marijuana are predisposed to mental illnesses at their later years which could be an exacerbation of the genetic or the environmental vulnerabilities that are already in existence within the person’s brain which may be manifest in early stress disorders or extreme violence. There is a current strong link between marijuana and schizophrenia and the related disorders.
Smoking of marijuana is also known to increase the heart rate by between 20-100% shortly after smoking it. This puts the users to a higher exposure to possible heart attack and the rate is even higher among the aging population who commonly has cardiac vulnerabilities.
Marijuana is also known to contain more carcinogens that tobacco. This causes them to be exposed to illnesses such as regular coughs, phlegm production, acute chest illnesses and a higher predisposition to lung infection than non-smokers in general.
Social effects
The smoking of marijuana is known to have negative social effects with the smokers reported to have impaired decisions, lowered cognitive abilities, social life that is not congruent to the others as well as negative career status. Workers who smoke marijuana are known to have a generally higher tardiness, they cause more accidents than the rest, are more absent from work than others, have increased workers compensation as well as higher job turnover.
The list of detriments caused especially to the society by the marijuana smokers is overwhelming evidence that the smoking of marijuana is not healthy for the person and to the society as well. It is also noteworthy that the treatments purported to be provided by the marijuana and the extracts are also available in other forms of well researched medicines that are not prone to abuse. From the cancer patients to the AIDS victims and critical injury patients, there are modes of medication that have been well researched and formed and still research goes on hence there is no excuse to supporting the addictive marijuana for the treatments.