Medicinal Maryjane Use

"Let me ask you something… if you had a choice, what would it be: Marijuana or Martinis?" This question appeared in the New York Times on Tuesday, May 12th, 1998. Due to the "Marijuana Tax Act" of 1937 the only legal choice that you and the 18 million other adults who used marijuana last year can make is the martini ("Against Drug Prohibition" ix). The legal acceptance of alcohol, however, does not exclude it from the category of a "drug," even in the eyes of the Food and Drug Administration. The prohibition of marijuana is historically counteractive and a direct defiance of First Amendment rights. This prohibition has denied thousands of critically ill patients a drug that would effectively treat their illness and relieve their pain. The basis upon which marijuana is prohibited has been proven by the very government which has banned the drug to be false.

Since 1914, our nation has outwardly protested against the use of any "drug," contrary to our past acceptance of the market. Before and during the Civil War, morphine (a derivative of opium) was implemented for it's anesthetic qualities and was used as a main ingredient in many medicines. Marijuana was al

It is in this that the prohibition of marijuana is most harmful to the American public. Graham Boyd, an attorney representing a group of plaintiffs including eleven prominent cancer and AIDS physicians in San Francisco presented to a federal judge on Friday, April 11, 1997 the following statement:

The DEA Administrator, however, overruled Judge Young, and the Court of Appeals allowed that decision to stand, denying the medical use of marijuana to seriously ill patients. Representative Barney Frank (a democrat from Massachusetts) introduced H.R. 1782, a bill which would also attempt to move medicinal marijuana from schedule I to schedule II, eliminating federal restrictions. This bill would not change state laws, allowing individual communities to determine for themselves whether marijuana should be medicinally available (New England Journal of Medicine, August 1997) .

"Over the last forty years, marijuana has been accused of causing an array of anti-social effects including … provoking crime and violence .. leading to heroin addiction … and destroying the American work ethic in young people. [These] beliefs … have not been substantiated by scientific evidence."

Some topics in this essay:
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