Leslie is suffering from Stage-IV cancer. Chemotherapy cannot benefit her case; she is going to die. The doctors have offered her morphine and Oxycontin to help make her last two months comfortable. As a mother of three children, Leslie would like to spend her last moments coherent, not drugged-up or passed-out on fierce pain medications. Unfortunately, Leslie is an Indiana resident with no other options.
Like Leslie, thousands of people nation-wide would benefit from the legalization of marijuana. Many medical groups support the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Among these are the Physician's Association for AIDS Care, and the National Lymphoma Foundation, and the American Public Health Association. .
"Marijuana has been proven to stimulate the appetite (Pluff)."" The Physician's Association for AIDS Care has conducted research to find that marijuana is the "only substance that consistently fuels the appetite of AIDS victims (LaFave)."" AIDS is a deadly disease that attacks the immune system, and patients need to fight through the side effects, like cachexia (loss of appetite), in order to take all the necessary precautions. Marijuana is proven to not only alleviate the side effects of AIDS, but also prevent subsequent illnesses by providing patients with the urge to eat and give their body necessary nutrients.
Glaucoma is a condition in which the optic nerve, which carries the images perceived by the eye to the brain, becomes damaged and causes gradual loss of peripheral vision. The damage is often, though not always, associated with higher than normal pressure within the eye. Research has been done by the American Academy of Ophthalmology to find evidence that marijuana prevents blindness in glaucoma patients and prevents glaucoma, in general. "Glaucoma patients who regularly smoked marijuana were 62% less likely to become blind than those who did not smoke (Adams).
