By Theresa Thompson Posted April 28, 2010
Many of you have probably heard of cannabis or marijuana. More than likely you know someone who has used cannabis. In a survey of three hundred people, 96% have used cannabis at least once and 14% use it several times a week. This drug is so common and very easy to get a hold of, so should it be illegal?
Legalized substances such as alcohol and tobacco cause more deaths per year than cannabis. It is physically impossible to overdose on cannabis. For a human to consume enough cannabis to kill them, they would have to consume almost 40,000 times the amount of THC required to intoxicate them. It only takes about 5 to 10 times the amount of alcohol required to intoxicate, to be fatal. For example, it takes 3 beers to intoxicate you, and 15 to 30 beers to kill you. However, it takes you 3 ‘hits’ of marijuana to intoxicate you and would take 120,000 hits to kill you. (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Can_you_overdose_on_marijuana_if_so_how).
In 2007, 12 states legalized cannabis for medical use. Cannabis helps people who suffer from multiple sclerosis (MS). 74 percent of people who started using cannabis after being diagnosed with MS said it either exterminated or regulated leg spasms, 54 percent said they used cannabis mainly for pain relief. (http://www.annieappleseedproject.org) This drug also has the potential to kill cancerous glioma cells. On Aug. 18, 1974, A Washington Post newspaper feature stated that marijuana’s primary element, THC, “slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers and virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent.” (http://www.lewrockwell.com)
Medical use of cannabis is limited, as it should also be recreationally. By legalizing cannabis the government could regulate its usage and focus its energy on stopping hard drugs, such as methamphetamine, and cocaine.
People have the choice to use the substance. Just like alcohol and ‘big tobacco’ products, the use of this substance is a personal decision, and just as other legalized substances, freedom should have a limit.
Cannabis is not looked down upon as much as other drugs and doesn’t have all the harmful effects of legalized ‘big tobacco’ products and alcohol either. In hard economic times, our country needs money, and if cannabis became legalized it would be a financial benefit for our country, by gaining money from the tax on cannabis. Overall cannabis would have more pros to being legalized than cons.
