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Some people say that Marijuana is not additive, some say it is. If it’s known to be both then how can people really know how it affects the body? On an interview with Elvis Duran and the morning show Lady Gaga admitted that she was addicted to marijuana. She was doing 15 joints of marijuana without tobacco in them every day. In Lady Gaga’s life she has been addicted to some type of drug from a young age. She used the analogy of Lilly pad drugs. She would get to the point where she couldn’t go any further with one substance so she would have to go to the next substance. She started doing marijuana on a tour because she was in a lot of pain; she was in so much pain that she was getting depressed. Lady Gaga said that looking back she can see that the pain was her hip, but at the time she didn’t know where it was coming from. She also said that it was to help with her anxiety. She started doing marijuana to stop the pain she would do the drug in the morning and then sleep it off in the afternoon; she said that she would never do a show high. She decided to speak about it so young people are aware that addiction to the drug is possible, and not a myth. (Wall Street Journal n.p)
Marijuana or Cannabis —often called pot, weed, or herb—is a greenish-gray mixture of the dried, shredded leaves, stems, seeds, and flowers of Cannabis sativa—the hemp plant, has been used as an instrument to achieve euphoria, a feeling or state of intense excitement and happiness, since ancient times. Marijuana has been traced back to the Chinese, dating from 2737 B.C.. From there it went to India to North Africa and then reached Europe around the time of 500 A.D.. In the record of the Chinese emperor Shen Nung the use of marijuana was for medication for rheuma...
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... he said “I would caution against this assumption[that marijuana is the most effective drug for medical purposes] due to the lack of consistent, repeatable scientific data available to prove marijuana's medical benefits.”
Works Cited
Wall Street Journal. "Lady Gaga Says She's Addicted to Marijuana." YouTube. YouTube, 13 Nov. 2013. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.
"DrugFacts: Marijuana." National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). N.p., Dec. 2012. Web. 06 Dec. 2013.
Messerli, Joe. "BalancedPolitics.org." - Legalization of Marijuana-Advantages & Disadvantages. Balanced Politics, n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.
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Cowley, Geoffrey and Mary Hager. “Can marijuana be medicine?” Newsweek Feb. 1997: Vol.129 Issue 5 page 22. <http://ehostvgw8.epnet.com/delivery.asp?…&startHitNum= 13&delType=FT>.
Richards , Sabrina. "The Scientist ." 23 January 2013. Is Cannabis Really That Bad? Web. 10 April 2014.
Schwartz, Richard H. "Marijuana: A Decade And A Half Later, Still A Crude Drug With Underappreciated Toxicity." Pediatrics 109.2 (2002): 284. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.
National Institute on Drug Abuse. "The Nagative consequences of Marijuana Use." Marijuana (Contemporary Issues Companion). Tardiff, Joseph, ed. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2008. 34-44. Print
"NIDA InfoFacts: Marijuana.” National Institute of Drug Abuse, Nov. 2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2011. .
Using the argument that marijuana will cause addiction upon the individual is purely inadequate to other drugs that come with the similar potential to cause addiction. All of medications come with risk factors, it just depends on the whether the individual is responsible or irresponsible. For example, a responsible adult will take the drug for amount of time prescribed and after the drug took its course of action he or she will cease taking the medication unless told otherwise by a healthcare professional. Prevention strategies for addiction includes “Reducing the availability of excess prescription medications” (Addiction Prevention). With marijuana, yes, it may be more of a challenge just to cease from taking the drug but as mentioned above, responsibility and education of long term effects are essential to reducing the risk of becoming addicted just as other drugs. Commercialized treatment options or medications, always speed up the narrator’s speaking when it comes to the mentioning of the adverse effects. Most of the time, the adverse effects outweigh the main purpose of taking the drug, despite that we still ingest the medication to return back to our normal health or to recover. Society has not overlooked the ugly or imperfect portion of marijuana being a treatment option, instead society has done the exact opposite. Medical use of marijuana should be a medical options
Smith, Dave. “Medical’ Marijuana: 10 Health Benefits That Legitimize Legalization.” www.ibtimes.com. IBT Media Inc., 8 Aug. 2012. Web. 15 Apr. 2016
Rosenthal, Ed, and Steve Kubby (2004) "Marijuana Should Be Legalized for Medical Use." Retrieved from Opposing Viewpoints: The War on Drugs.
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Stanley, Janet E., Stanley J. Watson, and John A. Benson. Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. Washington D.C.: National Academy P, 1999.
Those against medical marijuana have given many reasons for why it should not be legalized. One of the main reasons they argue is that “Marijuana smoke may contain known carcinogens and produces dependency in users” (Medical). But there have been many studies it has be proven that it actually does have some harm that is also associated with smoking, but the according to National Academy of Science they believe that “marijuana’s short term medical benefits outweigh any smoking-related harms for some patients”(Medical). Though marijuana has been proven to be less damaging to the lungs than tobacco, a study in 2006 “found no evidence that marijuana smokers had higher rates of lung cancer” (Medical Marijuana). The FDA have conducted test proving the effectiveness of marijuana many times and have found that the cannabinoids in marijuana are helpful in “treating pain associated with chemotherapy, postoperative recovery, and spinal cord injury, as well as neuropathic pain, which is often experienced by patients with metastatic cancer, multiple sclerosis, diabetes”.
Cox, Ted. "14 Kinds of Jobs Sustained by Marijuana." AlterNet. Alternet, 21 Sept. 2011. Web.
"Legalization of Marijuana." Student Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2012. Discovering Collection. Gale. MINITEX. 20 Mar. 2014
“Marijuana Abuse.” National Institute on Drug Abuse: The Science of Drug abuse and Addiction. NIH, n.d. Web. 4 Feb 2014.
A considerable amount of literature has been published on cannabis specifically marijuana. These studies classify marijuana into three species: Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and cannabis ruderalis. In fact, Cannabis sativa is the most widely used and recognized among the other species due to its ability to produce more fiber and oil. For many years, the plant has been used for making clothes as well as lighting and soap. Nevertheless, cannabis is widely used at the present time for intoxication and medical treatments. Marijuana is usually extracted from the flowers of the female plant (Grinspoon & Bakalar, 1993). According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, marijuana is well-defined as the “dried leaves, flowers, stems, and seeds from the hemp plant Cannabis sativa, which contains the psychoactive (mind-altering) chemical delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), as well as other related compounds. This plant material can also be concentrated in a resin called hashish” (NIDA, 2014).