The Pros And Cons Of Legalizing Marijuana

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CRITICAL THINKING Week 7 Assignment Tuesday, May 18, 2010 By: XXXXX The Pros and Cons of Legalizing Marijuana In 1839, W.B. O'Shaughnessy of the Medical College of Calcutta noted that the use of cannabis offered relief from an array of various aliments in traditional Indian culture. The main effects that cannabis offered came in the form of an analgesic and sleep inducer. As the early 1900’s evolved, cannabis was noted to provide patients relief from several disorders such as (but not limited to) asthma, muscle spasms, insomnia, migraines and even labor pains. In the 1970’s, cannabis was discovered to relieve the side effects of cancer treatments. The side effects of chemotherapy caused an array of notable side effects such as nausea, vomiting, insomnia, and chronic pain. Marijuana, when used for medicinal purposes is can offer relief from these debilitating side effects of cancer treatment. Legalizing Marijuana in America is something that has been on the table for many years. By legalizing Marijuana, we can reduce the cost of pharmaceutical development for medicines used to reduce the side effects of cancer treatments. Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Policy, authorized a review of Institute of Medicine (IOM) and discovered that IOM admitted that cannabis had medical value but the standpoint of the IOM offered was that “smoking is too dangerous a mode of drug delivery for cannabis—a conclusion based on an overestimate of the toxicity of marijuana smoke. Among its major recommendations was that patients with "debilitating symptoms (such as intractable pain or vomiting)" be permitted to smoke marijuana only after all conventional treatment options have failed—and then, only for six months and under "an oversight strategy comparable to an institutional review board process." In the end, the question boiled down to how to
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