Marijuana (also spelled marihuana) is a psychoactive drug made from the dried leaves and flowering parts of the hemp plant. It is one of the most strictly classified illegal drugs in the United States. Under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, marijuana is listed as a Schedule I substance, which defines it as having a high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical use. Marijuana is therefore classified more severely than cocaine and morphine, which as Schedule II drugs are also banned for general use, but can be prescribed by doctors.
It is illegal to buy, sell, grow, or possess marijuana in the United States. Marijuana prohibition comprises a large part of the federal governments War on Drugs. Law enforcement officials made 600,000 marijuana-related arrests in 1996, and 800,000 in 1998-four out of five arrests being for possession alone. Under federal and state laws, many of which were strengthened in the 1980s, people convicted of marijuana offenses face penalties ranging from probation to life imprisonment, plus fines and forfeiture of property.
In addition to criminal justice efforts, the federal government, state government, and local communities spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually on prevention programs such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), in which local police officers visit schools to teach young people to refrain from trying marijuana and other drugs. However, public controversy has been growing over the two assumptions-high abuse potential and no legitimate medical use-that underlie marijuanas status as a Schedule I drug.
In turn, disputes over the abuse and medical potential have shaped differences of opinion over public policy. Many of those who question one or both of these assumptions about marijuana have advocated a full or partial relaxation of the governments blanket prohibition of the drug, while those who accept these assumptions generally are opposed to any full or partial legalization of marijuana. Supporters of marijuanas continued prohibition argue that the drug is easily abused and can lead to numerous physical and psychological harms.
Short-term health effects-according to the NIDA (National Institute of Drug Abuse)-of the drug listed in this paper include memory loss, distorted perception, problems with learning and coordination, an increased heart rate, and anxiety attacks. Long-term effects according to NIDA-include increased risk of lung cancer for chronic marijuana smokers and possible damage to the immune and reproductive systems. In addition, marijuana opponents argue that many users attain a psychological dependence on the high that marijuana can create.
Such dependence can result in stunned emotional and social maturity as these users lose interest in school, job, and social activities. About 100,000 people each year resort to drug abuse treatment programs to end their marijuana addiction. Marijuana is also viewed by some commentators as a gateway drug that can lead to the abuse of other dangerous and illegal substances, including cocaine and heroinOn the other hand, critics of U. S marijuana policy argue that the dangers of marijuana have been exaggerated.
They contend that many, not most, users of marijuana suffer no lasting harm, do not move onto other drugs, ad do not become addicts. Some surveys on marijuana use in America have shown that nine out of ten people who have tried marijuana have since quit. Researchers working with rats have found that marijuana is a far less addictive substance for the animals than cocaine or heroin Pro-Legalization activist R. Keith Stroup summed up the views of many who oppose marijuana prohibition when he asserted before a committee that moderate marijuana use is relatively harmless-far less harmless than that of either tobacco or alcohol.
Whether or not marijuana, as a Schedule I drug, truly has no currently accepted medical use is also a matter of public controversy. In November 1996, voters in two states, California and Arizona, passed referenda that legalized marijuana for medical use (these developments and the actions of other states have no impact on marijuanas status as an illegal Schedule I drug). Supporters of the California and Arizona initiatives maintain that marijuana is effective in alleviating the symptoms of medical conditions such as AIDS, glaucoma, and multiple sclerosis.
Anecdotal evidence of marijuanas efficacy, advocates claim, comes from AIDS patients who have used marijuana to restore a appetite and cancer patients who have smoked it to combat nausea caused by chemotherapy treatments-often as a last resort when legally prescribed medicines failed. Those who contend that marijuana has useful medical purposes call for the government to at least reclassify the drug as a Schedule II substance that can be prescribed by doctors.
As stated by Lester Grinspoon, a Harvard University psychiatrist, marijuanas continued prohibition as a Schedule I substance is medically absurd, legally questionable, and morally wrong. The California and Arizona referenda legalizing medical marijuana were strongly opposed by prominent federal government officials, including the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Barry McCaffrey, who criticized the measures as being dishonest and asserted that marijuana is neither safe or effective as medicine.
Opponents argue that the very concept of medical marijuana is absurd because it is not, like most modern medicines, a synthesized chemical whose composition can be precisely manufactured and controlled. Instead, it is taken from a plant and consists of four hundred chemicals whose exact composition varies with each dose. Furthermore, they assert, marijuanas claimed medical effectiveness by clinical trials. Marijuanas psychoactive properties may make people feel better, contends Robert L. Peterson, a former Michigan drug enforcement official, but that does not make a drug a medicine.
Marijuana opponents maintain that better legal medical alternatives to marijuana exist-including Marinol, a pill available by a physicians prescription that contains THC, the main active ingredient in marijuana. An additional concern voiced by many is that legalizing marijuana for medical purposes would send the wrong message to Americas youth. At a time when our nation is looking for solutions to the problem of teenage drug use, asks Thomas A. Constantine, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, how can we justify giving a stamp of approval to an illegal substance which has no legitimate medical use?
Whether or not marijuanas possible medical advantages outweigh its potential harm is a central question in current debates about this controversial drug. This paper presents various opinions and viewpoints of marijuana and its uses, as well as information on its history and genetic make-up. The marijuana, cannabis, or hemp plant is one of the oldest psychoactive plants known to mankind. There are three classifications or species of cannabis: Cannabis Sativa, Cannabis Indica, and Cannabis Ruderalis.
The fiber has been used for cloth and paper and was the most important source of rope until the development of synthetic fibers. The seeds have been used as bird feed and sometimes as human food. The oil contained in the seeds was once used for lighting and soap and is now sometimes employed in the manufacture of varnish, linoleum, and artists paints. The chemical compound responsible for the intoxicating and medicinal effects are found mainly in a sticky golden resin exuded from the flowers on the female plants.
The marijuana plant contains more than 460 known compounds of which more than 60 have the 21-carbon structure typical of cannabinoids. The only cannabinoid that is both highly psychoactive and present in large amounts, usually 1-5 % in weight, is (-)3,4-trans-delta-1-tetrahydrocannabinol, also know as delta-1-THC, delta-9-THC or simply THC. A few other tetrahydrocannabinols are about as potent as delta-9-THC but are present in only a few varieties of cannabis and in much smaller quantities. A native of central Asia, cannabis may have been cultivated as much as ten thousand years ago.
It was certainly cultivated in China by 4000 B. C. and in Turkestan by 3000 B. C. It has long since been used as a medicine in China, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and India for malaria, constipation, rheumatic pins, absent-mindedness, and female problems, to quicken the mind, to induce sleep, dysentery and fevers. The medical use of cannabis was already in decline by 1890. The potency of cannabis preparations was to variant, and individual responses to orally ingested cannabis seemed erratic and unpredictable.
Another reason for the neglect of research oh the analgesic properties of cannabis was that the greatly increased use of opiates after the invention of the hypodermic syringe in the 1850s allowed soluble drugs to be injected for fast relief of pain; hemp products are insoluble in water and cannot be administered so easily by injection. Toward the end of the twentieth century, the development of synthetic drugs such as aspirin, chloral hydrate, and barbiturates, which are chemically more stable than cannabis indica and therefore more reliable, hastened the decline of cannabis as a medicine.
But the new drugs had severe disadvantages. More than a thousand people died from aspirin-induced bleeding each year in the United States, and barbiturates are, of course, more dangerous. One may have expected physicians looking for a better analgesic to turn to cannabinoid substances, especially after 1940, when it became possible to study congeners (chemical relatives) of THC that might have more stable and specific effects. But the Marijuana Tax Law of 1937 undermined any such experimentation.
This law was the culmination of a campaign organized by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics under Harry Anslinger in which the public was led to believe that marijuana was addictive and its use led to violent crimes, psychosis, and mental deterioration. The film Reefer Madness, made as a part of Anslingers campaign, may be a joke to the sophisticated today, but it was once regarded as a serious attempt to address a social problem, and the atmosphere and attitudes it exemplified and promoted continue to influence our culture today.
Under the Marijuana Tax Law Act, anyone using the hemp plant for certain defined industrial or medical use was required to register and pay a tax of a dollar an ounce. A person using marijuana for any other purpose had to pay $100 an ounce. The law was not directly aimed at medicinal use of marijuana; it was aimed at the recreational use of marijuana. By the 1960s, as larger numbers of people began to use marijuana recreationally, anecdotes about its medical use began to appear, generally not in medical literature, but in the form of letters to popular magazines like Playboy.
Meanwhile, legislative concern about recreational use increased, and in 1970 Congress passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act (also known as the Controlled Substances Act), which assigned psychoactive drugs to five Schedules and placed cannabis in Schedule I, the most restrictive. NORML petitioned this placement in 1972, asking that it be moved to Schedule II, therefore enabling it to be prescribed by physicians.
Congress compromised 13 years later by placing synthetic delta-9-THC (dronabinol) as a Schedule II drug in 1985, but kept marijuana itself-and the THC derived from marijuana-in Schedule I. Marijuana can be harmful when abused, and its use by minors should be discouraged. However, when used in moderation and responsibly, marijuana is far less harmful than tobacco or alcohol. Its continued criminal prohibition by the government is a wasteful and destructive social policy that results in the needless arrests of thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens.
Marijuana should be legalized or decriminalized. At the very least, it should be made available by medical prescription for patients who need it to alleviate suffering. -R. Keith Stroup, founder of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) Since 1970, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws has been a voice for Americans who believe it is both counter-productive and unjust to treat marijuana smokers as criminals.
We do not suggest that marijuana is totally harmless or that it cannot be abused. That is true for all drugs, including those which are legal. We do not believe that moderate marijuana use is relatively harmless-far less harmful to the user than either tobacco or alcohol, for example-and that any risk presented by marijuana smoking falls well within the ambit of choice we permit the individual in a free society. Today, far more harm is caused by marijuana prohibition than by marihuana itself.
