Originally posted by: destrekor
chess9, there is a problem with the logic you've shown. Not an attack, mind you, just want to show why it doesn't make sense.
First, just because marijuana smoke may be harmful, automatically makes it right to be illegal? Huh? So why are cigarettes legal? Nicotine is also a far more addictive drug. Alcohol is destructive to the liver, yet remains legal. Why? These two drugs have been so readily accepted by the world, due to their usage through the time of civilization, that making them illegal would drive the world into chaos. Look at what happened with the Prohibition.
Yet, marijuana never reached that same level of social acceptance. Sure, it has been used forever in tribal circles and other civilizations around the world throughout history, but in more modern civilization, just never reached the same level. That, and an extremely effective campaign to demonize the drug and the culture of the users made it easy to bring everyone to the same side - "weed is evil!". Whether or not the cotton industry and other giants had a hand in making it illegal doesn't really matter. The fact that it remains illegal is illogical when compared to what IS legal. Some kind of precedence has been set, yet it's not followed at all. That fact that alcohol was made illegal and re-legalized doesn't add any weight. If nicotine products were ever made illegal and then re-legalized, at that time marijuana would likely be a shoe-in to be made legal following precedence.
Second, studies showing lung damage aren't revealing the entire truth. While I have no doubt that lung damage is possible through normal smoking methods of marijuana, it is doubtful the participants of those studies have smoked only marijuana their entire life. Many smokers also consume tobacco in some form. With the people of the culture I've known, small cigar products are common, and usually smoked. That, and many wrap their marijuana in tobacco-leaf shells, and when holding in the tobacco smoke in the lungs at the same time, for the same duration, as marijuana, surely that could have an effect. Whether this is the case, who knows.
But for another point, marijuana is also very beneficial as a medical drug. First, marijuana can be vaporized instead of smoking, which greatly decreases, if done right, to the point of nearly 0%, the negative components of marijuana smoke. Second, with it being nearly pure THC and cannibidiol, the positive effects are magnified. THC has been found, through research, to potentially have anti-tumor properties. On the other hand, while Nicotine is not carcinogenic, it does act as a pro-tumor agent, providing an environment ripe for carcinogens to work against the body. THC acts as an anti-tumor agent, attacking tumors, in hormone-controlled organs.
Article (Page 1),
Article (Page 2). (these were screen-captures on an article, from a database that requires authentication from universities, and accessed these through my school's subscription).
Additionally, marijuana has already been completely linked to relief from painful medical conditions, even in patients that do not respond to prescription medications. Why keep patients in pain, when there is a readily-available product that can do it for them?
And how many cancer patients, who have either with suggestion from their doctor, or on their own, take up marijuana use? Specifically, how many of these patients who have used marijuana, eventually fully-recover from whatever cancer they had? In every case, the medical treatment they received is proclaimed as what cured them. I am willing to bet, based on the above-linked article, that there are patients that recovered solely due to THC use. They make have took up marijuana use for help with nausea or simply relief, but it may have played a major role in curing them of cancer. We don't know this, because no one is doing any real research on this potential link. Why? Because the drug is illegal and being given grants to perform research with illegal drugs is essentially impossible. This country needs to start looking at the medical community and seeing if certain drugs actually have beneficial uses. But politics are so heavily involved in marijuana staying illegal, it'll be a long time before any happens with that.
But as more and more states continue to make marijuana de-criminalized and/or legal for medical usage, it'll gain more and more momentum in the Federal government. I can see, one day in the future, it will be made either de-criminalized for fully legal.
Hopefully the latter, because we need to waste less taxpayer money on keeping 'criminals' of marijuana use locked up.
