FREE ESSAY ON MARIJUANA

MARIJUANA

Americans have been trying to legalize marijuana for years. It seems that all of their
opinions divide into three basic groups. Many think that it is not worth legalizing
marijuana, many seem to think it should be legalized, and a group of people say it should
only be legalized for medicinal purposes.
In the following paragraphs I will try to show you reason for all three opinions.
My hopes of doing this research project were to specifically determine what effects
marijuana in combination with different substances had on the body. I also decided to
determine the differences between marijuana and tobacco, due to the high misconceptions
about both of them in society today.
First of all, I had begun to due research specifically on the subject Is marijuana more
dangerous than tobacco, but due to the lack of information, I had to broaden my topic. I
now understand which one is more dangerous and, for the most part, the long term affects.
Through both animal and human testings, it has been proven that marijuana impairs lung
functions to a greater extent than tobacco cigarettes do. But, this does not necessarily
mean that marijuana users are putting themselves at more risk persay. Actually, a typical
marijuana user will smoke maybe two cigarettes a day, whereas a typical tobacco-user will
smoke between forty and sixty cigarettes in the same period. Now, the effects of the two
have changed roles. Marijuana may have more tar in it, but at the usage rate in society
today, tobacco-users put themselves at a much larger risks. Also, there is a chemical
called benzopyrene that is 70% more abundant in marijuana than tobacco. This chemical is
believed to cause and produce cancer. Tobacco has the same dangerous chemicals in it, yet
the main one that it lacks that marijuana has is THC. THC, more specifically known as
delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, is the drug that produces the high feeling that so many
marijuana users become accustomed to. Marijuana usually does not contain more than 1
percent of THC. There are stronger drugs related to THC, such as hash oil, which can
contain up to a 28 percent THC level. There have been some cases where street marijuana
has been found to contain up to 5 percent THC content. That is very potent for normal
marijuana, and is probably very hard to come by in the United States. Other countries
seem to use different forms of THC related drugs such as hashish, and hemp. Both of these
contain more THC than marijuana. As far as long term effects of tobacco and marijuana go,
they are about the same. Cancer should appear in the lungs of a tobacco-user earlier due
to the amount the tobacco-user smokes in relation to a normal marijuana smoker. There
have been many assumptions that marijuana will cause long term brain damage and so on,
but, clinically, none of this has ever been proven. In fact, in a college survey, the
students who use the drug regularly possessed a higher GPA than those who do not use.
This is an entire different subject, but it was interesting to learn. 
Both tobacco and marijuana contain tar. Marijuana contains a little more and will
actually feel heavier on the lungs after smoking. Tar has been found to produce tumors on
the skin of animals that it is applied to. Cancer has definitely been related to smoking
and is the largest killer in the United States today. Thus, marijuana contains more of
the dangerous cancer causing chemicals than tobacco does. Although this would constitute
marijuana as being more dangerous, in the society we live in today and the amount of
tobacco that tobacco-users consume, this belief is on the contrary. Due to the smaller
frequency use of product by marijuana-users, tobacco has definitely been proven the
killer in today's society. 
Additionally, one of the predominant mixes of today is the use of both marijuana and
alcohol in combination. Alcohol has already proven to be a lethal drug, especially when
driving, but together with marijuana, the effects are much greater than either drug
alone. 
As in a comparison between both of them, alcohol has many more damages to the human body
and mental psyche than
marijuana. Both drugs can become dependent upon, and the effects can be life destroying.
Alcohol, as a physical harm places stress upon the body that could make it react by not
eating. Alcohol depletes the body of certain vitamins and minerals, causing an unsteady
diet. It also wreaks havoc on the bowel movements! As far as marijuana goes, there may be
a little redness in the eyes and gaining in weight. The gaining in weight is due to the
conception of the munchies as many marijuana smokers experience after usage of the drug.
Reasons for both of their uses are different, but that really doesn't matter in the
scheme of this paper. As one book supplied a very nice bit of information concerning the
usage of these drugs together. Marijuana and ethanol (alcohol) not only modify mental and
psychomotor performance but also influence physiological parameters. Alcohol on the
subject of driving is more critical also. Although the effects of driving under the
influence of marijuana may seem harmful, as listed in my annotations, the fact still
stands clear that more accidents are caused by drunk drivers than any other drug or
combinations of them. Most of the information I found on the effects of driving under the
influence of marijuana were very negative, but they just didn't seem to make sense since
so few accidents are caused by driving under the influence of this drug. One book said,
more or less, that there is good evidence that marijuana interferes with driving skills
and is a significant factor in erratic driving. That seems like a valid statement. But,
another source stated, astonishingly enough after an experimentation , that the
experienced marijuana smokers showed no impairment of performance in their driving
ability. The opposite held truefor the counterparts of inexperienced marijuana smokers,
but this fact was very contradicting to everything else I had read to this point. There
it was, in black in white, researched and everything, that there was no impairment of
performance in the marijuana smokers driving ability under the influence of the drug.
Only one conclusion could be made from that. Driving under the influence of marijuana is
a learned skill. I guess Cheech and Chong had it mastered!!!
Finally, on to a more personal note. Marijuana and combinations with other drugs have
been growing around the colleges for years. I always thought--yeah, yeah, all the parties
and events that go on are the places to find them. This assumption was definitely
correct, both at Ann Arbor and in Lansing. The surveys were 100% correct with the
information that alcohol and marijuana are the highest used drug combination. There are
also many other drugs coming back into popularity from both the past and new ones. A new
combination that I have heard about is Nitrous (laughing gas) combined with marijuana
use. It is supposedly a potent combination and could call for more research. I did a
little on my own and found out a couple of things. Nitrous-Oxide, which is normally found
in dentist offices all over, is a mixture of nitrous and oxygen and is used to put a
patient to sleep for surgical reasons. The other kind going around in circulation is pure
nitrous, with out the oxygen compound. The gas found at the dentists office is supposedly
safe, as I consulted with a dentist on this topic, but the nitrous in pure form is
thought to kill brain cells. Although I didn't get too far into this research, I found it
interesting. I was just curious because the word around is that it is an intense high. In
no way am I implying that I have experienced any of this!
The myth No one has ever died of a marijuana overdose is true. This myth was put to a
test; it showed that animal tests revealed extremely high doses of marijuana are needed
to have any lethal effect. This has led scientists to find that the ratio of the amount
of marijuana necessary to get a person stoned is relative to the amount necessary to kill
them is one to 40,000. In other words, to overdose, you would have to consume 40,000
times as much marijuana as you needed to get stoned. In contrast, a ten to one ratio of
alcohol would certainly cause alcohol poisoning. It is easy to see how five thousand
people die of alcohol overdoses every year and no one has EVER died of a marijuana
overdose.
Marijuana is a gateway drug that leads to hard drugs. This statement is a recurring myth.
Currently, the Netherlands is a prime example of what happens when marijuana is readily
available. The Dutch partly legalized marijuana in the 1970s. Since then, hard drug
use--heroin and cocaine--have declined substantially. If marijuana really were a gateway
drug, one would have expected the use of hard drugs to have gone up, not down. This
apparent negative gateway effect has also been observed in the United States. Studies
done in the early 1970s showed a negative correlation between marijuana and the use of
alcohol. In 1993 a Rand Corporation study compared drug use in states that had
decriminalized marijuana versus those that had not. The study showed that where marijuana
was more available--hard drug use (according to emergency rooms) decreased. In short,
what science and actual experience tell us is that marijuana tends to substitute for the
much more dangerous hard drugs like alcohol, cocaine, and heroin.
The statement Legalization of marijuana would cause more car accidents on the highway is
yet another myth. Marijuana does impair a person's performance much like alcohol.
However, studies of the effects of marijuana on automobile accidents suggest that it
poses less of a hazard than alcohol. When a random sample of fatal accident victims was
studied, it was found that marijuana was associated with relatively as many accidents as
alcohol. However, a closer examination revealed that around 85% of the people intoxicated
on marijuana were also intoxicated on alcohol. For people only intoxicated on marijuana,
the rate was much lower than for alcohol alone. This evidence, has also been supported by
other research using several completely different methods.
To try and explain feeling stoned to someone who has never been there is very difficult.
A survey in 1971 of 100 volunteers who were regular marijuana smokers produced the
following results as to what being stoned actually is. Many users notice a greater sense
of sound, increased hunger (eating a whole week's food in one night), thirst, dry mouth,
feelings of increased empathy, and a feeling that time has slowed down. The majority of
subjects experienced no ill-effects, slept well and awoke calm and clear headed after the
acute effects had passed. A small number of users reported negative feelings of anxiety.
The feelings you experience are also influenced by the amount of marijuana you take, its
potency, the environment you are in and your emotional state before getting stoned. It is
probably impossible to describe exactly what it is, but the above survey is a fair report
of what happens to you when you get stoned.
The myth There is more than a thousand chemicals in marijuana smoke is true, but
misleading. The August 31, 1990 issue of the magazine Science notes that of the more than
800 damaging chemicals present in coffee, only twenty-one have actually been tested on
animals and sixteen of these cause cancer in rodents. Yet coffee remains legal and is
generally considered fairly safe.
The dominant fear about marijuana in the 20th century has been that its effects were
somehow similar to the dangerously addictive effects of opiates such as morphine and
heroin. Scientists feared that , like opiates, it had an extremely high potential for
abuse and addiction. Despite widespread decriminalization of marijuana in the United
States in the 1970's, this concern has remained the basis for federal law and policies
regarding the use and study of marijuana. But the discovery of THC receptor sites in the
brain refutes that thinking and may force scientists to re-evaluate their positions.
The next opinion we are to look at is that marijuana should not b legalized. Still people
seem to think that marijuana is a gateway drug because, supposedly bacouse it feels soo
good , that people might want to try biger and better things. Many important brain
functions which affect human behavior involve the neurotransmitter dopamine. Serious
drugs of abuse such as heroin and cocaine, int with the brain's use of dopamine in
manners that can seriously alter an individual's behavior. A drug's ability to affect the
neural systems related to dopamine production has now become the defining characteristic
of drugs with serious abuse potential. The discovery of a previously unknown system of
cannabinoid neural transmitters is profound. While century-old questions such as why
marijuana is nontoxic are finally being answered, new fascinating questions are emerging.
In the words of Israeli researcher Raphael Mechoulam, the man who first isolated the
structure of THC, Why do we have cannabinoid receptors?
The second opinion that people have is that marijuana should not be leagalived. They have
some very strong points to back this up too. An April, 1994 report titled Violent
Drug-Related Crime compiled by the Drug and Crime Data Center and Clearinghouse indicates
that drugs are used by many offenders committing crimes. In 1991, the following
percentages of state prison inmates involved in violent offenses reported that they had
used drugs at the time the offense was committed: Violent Offenses: 28%, Homicide: 28%,
Sexual Assault: 20%, Robbery: 38%, and Assault: 23%.
Legalization proponents ignore the fact that the people committing violent crimes are
career criminals who
will not stop their illegal activities once drugs are legalized; they will instead seek
new sources of illicit
revenue. Criminal activity would not be reduced as a result of drug legalization any more
than gangster
activity disappeared after the repeal of Prohibition. The group discussed the fallacy
that legalizing drugs
would eliminate the black market environment which seems to fuel the drug trade and its
attendant violence.
The existence of a black market is heavily dependent on the parameters set by the
legalizers: which drugs
would be legal, the potency level of drugs and the age at which legal drugs could be
purchased. If drugs
were legal for persons over 18, for example, drug traffickers would still target those 17
and younger; if only
marijuana were legalized, drug traffickers would continue to traffic in heroin and
cocaine.Some facts which help to confirm the observations of the forum participants may
be used in debates: A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (7/6/94)
reports that cocaine use is linked to high rates of homicide in New York City and that
homicide victims may have provoked violence through irritability, paranoid thinking or
verbal and physical aggression which are known to be pharmacologic effects of cocaine.
This is just one of the factual quotes i found durring my reseach, Which proves that
marijuana is not the mainly resonsible drug in the drug related crimes. Even though there
are also statistics wich show that it playes a great role.
Data from the National Institute of Justice (U.S. Department of Justice) Drug Use
Forecasting (DUF)
program underscore the crime-drugs link. Of a sample of males arrested in 23 U.S. cities
in 1993, the
percent testing positive for at least one drug in the DUF survey ranged from 54% in Omaha
to 81% in
Chicago. Among female arrestees, the percent testing positive for any drug in 20 cities
ranged from 42% in
San Antonio to 83% in Manhattan. Now nobody can argue with that, drugs are deffinetly a
problem wich srongly influences the diverse ppopulation of the U.S.
In conclusion of this opinion, i would like you to how marijuana has effected our school.
Department of Justice statistics indicate a growing number of young arrestees are
marijuana smokers. Data from 12 major urban areas showed a sharp jump, from 16.5% in 1992
to 26% in 1993, in teenage arrestees who tested positive for marijuana, the Department
said. And this is the modern, high-test marijuana, about three times (sometimes more) the
strength of the 1960s and 1970s weed. I think through-out the history of the school,
students have been caught with marijuana on school grounds. Marijuana haunts almost every
school as one of the larger problems, in the U.S. public or private.
The third opinion on legalization of marijuana is that it should be legalized but limited
only to medicinal use.
Marijuana as medicine has been studied for many years. In some cultures, it is already
used as medicine, and it stems back from many generations. There are many good uses for
marijuana to be used as medicine which I will be discussing in following paragraphs. The
problem is that in order to be used in America as medicine, marijuana must be legalized.
Marijuana has a long history of medical use. It is one of the oldest living plants and,
in ancient times, was used as various forms of medicine through ingestion of the plant.
The first recorded use of marijuana as medicine was in China. It was reported in Pen
Ts?oo Ching in first or second century A.D. It reported that ma-fe-san(boiled hemp
compound) was used as an anesthetic for surgical patients. Ma fen (the fruit of hemp) had
many uses such as clearing blood and cooling temperature, relieving fluxes, undoing
rheumatism, and discharging pus for patients. China is not the only country to use the
drug in early times. It was introduced to southeast Asia around sixteenth century
A.D.Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam are reported to have current uses of marijuana as
medicine. In Cambodia, they have an
enormous list of uses, but to name a few are: to treat malaria, to relieve asthma and
calm the nerves, regulate the function of the heart, and treats paralysis. In Thailand,
it is used in folk medicine as well as in the official medical reports. In folk medicine,
the people sun dry the leaves and boil them to treat migraines, and dizzy spells. It is
also taken as a relaxant before bedtime. In Vietnam, it has many uses. Cannabis is used
to alleviate loss of memory, eliminate blood loss, and to treat gynecological problems. 
As you can see, there are many different uses for marijuana as medicine. It is impossible
to explore all the uses of the drug, but we will look at a few in detail now. One
question is the effectiveness of THC to reduce nausea in chemotherapy patients. Because
cancer is on the rise, there are more and more people using chemotherapy as treatment in
America. Right now, there are many different types of chemotherapy drugs, and they all
have the same side effects. Some are: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation,
dyspepsia, heart burn, and ulceration. These are only the gastrointestinal effects. There
are hair effects, skin effects, and muscle and nerve effects to these drugs. Drugs
administered to treat the side effects of nausea, and vomiting are mostly ineffective.
However, there are reports that state that THC, taken in a capsule or in a cigarette,
does reduce nausea and vomiting. The controversy is that some patients experienced
hallucinations while taking the drug. The hallucinations were experienced perhaps because
too much of the drug was taken at one time. The question that is brought up is How much
is an effective dose? First, the way the drug is taken varies on the individual. Some
people react differently to all kinds of drugs taken orally. After deciding on how the
patient should orally take the drug, the person administering the drug must keep in mind
other considerations. First, the drug must be given early enough to prevent anticipatory
vomiting. This is a well known phenomenon in cancer patients. That is chemotherapy
patients expect to vomit and in anticipation of it, they begin vomiting before the
treatment even begins. 
Another consideration of administering the drug is blood concentration level. The amount
of the drug must raise the concentration of the drug in the blood to more than 10.0
ng./ml. On the other hand, it must be at a lower blood concentration level than that
which will initiate severe mood alteration. Lastly, it must be given often enough to
maintain the concentration level until the threat of vomiting has passed. The second
question raised by critics is the age of the patient. In some studies, it was found that
people over the age of 60, had such severe mood alterations that they dropped out of the
study. This may have been because the amount of the drug taken was too great. Other
studies have proved that taking THC with other nausea reducing drugs prove to work with
the older patients. Overall, THC in marijuana is accepted by many doctors and scientists
to be effective for reducing or stopping vomiting in chemotherapy patients. 
Another potential medical use of marijuana is to control spasm and spasticity. Spasms and
spasticity are usually caused by stroke, cerebral palsy, and multiple sclerosis. It is
also caused by spinal cord damage from automobile accidents, athletic injuries, violence,
and combat. Spasms affect over one million Americans. Sometimes, muscles can become
permanently contracted if the spasms are chronic. As of now, there is no effective
surgery or medicine to treat spasms. Neurosurgery does not eliminate spasticity. Drugs
for spasms are not that effective and usually have many side effects. For these reasons
marijuana should be studied more because it proving to be very effective with few or no
side effects. In order to be effective, marijuana must be taken daily. It seems to be the
most effective three hours after dosage, and last for five hours. However, a question is
raised about taking marijuana. One is about tolerance to the drug. Some critic contend
that after taken for a period of time, the person may become tolerant to the drug, and
reduce effectiveness. This is true for a lot of pain relieving drugs. A person can not
rule out marijuana on that question alone, and it has not been proven that a person will
develop tolerance. These two examples are just a few. Marijuana must be studied and
tested more to prove effectiveness, but it is not because it is not legal. Doctors and
scientists don?t want to study a drug that they could never use. Another reason it is not
studied a lot is because the potency of the plant varies so much that it is too hard to
standardize a dose. Also, marijuana can not be patented since it is illegal so there is
not incentive to study it. 
There are many uses for marijuana, and many are unexplored. Actually, some are explored
in depth because of interest, and others are left behind. There are probably many other
uses that have not been found because of the lack of experimentation on the drug as a
whole. If the drug is legalized, there will be much more research done on the drug, and
hopefully the drug will begin to be approved for use.An overwhelming nubmer of doctors
AND patients lay claim to the fact marijuana acts as a pain reliever and can help to
alieviate many of the symptoms associated with glaucoma, aids, cancer (chemotherapy),
multiple sclerosis, chronic migraines, and numerous other diseases. It is also a proven
fact that marijuana can reduce feelings of nausea and suppress vomiting. In November's
past election they passed in California and Arizona laws allowing for doctors to prescibe
marijuana (in Arizona, doctors can now prescribe any drug they see fit) to patients they
think will benefit from its use. As the government still can not grow marijuana for
distribution the patient is required to obtain the medicine from an illicit source,
paying the street rate. If the government could grow marijuana to distribute as medicine,
a one day supply for an ill patient would cost about a dollar. Buying the pot at the
street rate, patients are spending between ten and twenty dollars a day, and all of this
money is funneled right back into the illegal business of smuggling and distributing
marijuana on the streets. The argument of marijuana having medicinal value is the main
point of attack used in the battle to legalize the drug by organizations such as NORML.
In conclusion I would like not to say anymore about either one of the three, verry well
backed piont of views. I believe that a try opinion is is formed in ones mind, not in
what people say to influence the opinion in their faivor. Looking at the facts I would
like you to make an opinion of you own.
Americans have been trying to legalize marijuana for years. It seems that all of their
opinions divide into three basic groups. Many think that it is not worth legalizing
marijuana, many seem to think it should be legalized, and a group of people say it should
only be legalized for medicinal purposes.
In the following paragraphs I will try to show you reason for all three opinions.
My hopes of doing this research project were to specifically determine what effects
marijuana in combination with different substances had on the body. I also decided to
determine the differences between marijuana and tobacco, due to the high misconceptions
about both of them in society today.
First of all, I had begun to due research specifically on the subject Is marijuana more
dangerous than tobacco, but due to the lack of information, I had to broaden my topic. I
now understand which one is more dangerous and, for the most part, the long term affects.
Through both animal and human testings, it has been proven that marijuana impairs lung
functions to a greater extent than tobacco cigarettes do. But, this does not necessarily
mean that marijuana users are putting themselves at more risk persay. Actually, a typical
marijuana user will smoke maybe two cigarettes a day, whereas a typical tobacco-user will
smoke between forty and sixty cigarettes in the same period. Now, the effects of the two
have changed roles. Marijuana may have more tar in it, but at the usage rate in society
today, tobacco-users put themselves at a much larger risks. Also, there is a chemical
called benzopyrene that is 70% more abundant in marijuana than tobacco. This chemical is
believed to cause and produce cancer. Tobacco has the same dangerous chemicals in it, yet
the main one that it lacks that marijuana has is THC. THC, more specifically known as
delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, is the drug that produces the high feeling that so many
marijuana users become accustomed to. Marijuana usually does not contain more than 1
percent of THC. There are stronger drugs related to THC, such as hash oil, which can
contain up to a 28 percent THC level. There have been some cases where street marijuana
has been found to contain up to 5 percent THC content. That is very potent for normal
marijuana, and is probably very hard to come by in the United States. Other countries
seem to use different forms of THC related drugs such as hashish, and hemp. Both of these
contain more THC than marijuana. As far as long term effects of tobacco and marijuana go,
they are about the same. Cancer should appear in the lungs of a tobacco-user earlier due
to the amount the tobacco-user smokes in relation to a normal marijuana smoker. There
have been many assumptions that marijuana will cause long term brain damage and so on,
but, clinically, none of this has ever been proven. In fact, in a college survey, the
students who use the drug regularly possessed a higher GPA than those who do not use.
This is an entire different subject, but it was interesting to learn. 
Both tobacco and marijuana contain tar. Marijuana contains a little more and will
actually feel heavier on the lungs after smoking. Tar has been found to produce tumors on
the skin of animals that it is applied to. Cancer has definitely been related to smoking
and is the largest killer in the United States today. Thus, marijuana contains more of
the dangerous cancer causing chemicals than tobacco does. Although this would constitute
marijuana as being more dangerous, in the society we live in today and the amount of
tobacco that tobacco-users consume, this belief is on the contrary. Due to the smaller
frequency use of product by marijuana-users, tobacco has definitely been proven the
killer in today's society. 
Additionally, one of the predominant mixes of today is the use of both marijuana and
alcohol in combination. Alcohol has already proven to be a lethal drug, especially when
driving, but together with marijuana, the effects are much greater than either drug
alone. 
As in a comparison between both of them, alcohol has many more damages to the human body
and mental psyche than
marijuana. Both drugs can become dependent upon, and the effects can be life destroying.
Alcohol, as a physical harm places stress upon the body that could make it react by not
eating. Alcohol depletes the body of certain vitamins and minerals, causing an unsteady
diet. It also wreaks havoc on the bowel movements! As far as marijuana goes, there may be
a little redness in the eyes and gaining in weight. The gaining in weight is due to the
conception of the munchies as many marijuana smokers experience after usage of the drug.
Reasons for both of their uses are different, but that really doesn't matter in the
scheme of this paper. As one book supplied a very nice bit of information concerning the
usage of these drugs together. Marijuana and ethanol (alcohol) not only modify mental and
psychomotor performance but also influence physiological parameters. Alcohol on the
subject of driving is more critical also. Although the effects of driving under the
influence of marijuana may seem harmful, as listed in my annotations, the fact still
stands clear that more accidents are caused by drunk drivers than any other drug or
combinations of them. Most of the information I found on the effects of driving under the
influence of marijuana were very negative, but they just didn't seem to make sense since
so few accidents are caused by driving under the influence of this drug. One book said,
more or less, that there is good evidence that marijuana interferes with driving skills
and is a significant factor in erratic driving. That seems like a valid statement. But,
another source stated, astonishingly enough after an experimentation , that the
experienced marijuana smokers showed no impairment of performance in their driving
ability. The opposite held true
for the counterparts of inexperienced marijuana smokers, but this fact was very
contradicting to everything else I had read to this point. There it was, in black in
white, researched and everything, that there was no impairment of performance in the
marijuana smokers driving ability under the influence of the drug. Only one conclusion
could be made from that. Driving under the influence of marijuana is a learned skill. I
guess Cheech and Chong had it mastered!!!
Finally, on to a more personal note. Marijuana and combinations with other drugs have
been growing around the colleges for years. I always thought--yeah, yeah, all the parties
and events that go on are the places to find them. This assumption was definitely
correct, both at Ann Arbor and in Lansing. The surveys were 100% correct with the
information that alcohol and marijuana are the highest used drug combination. There are
also many other drugs coming back into popularity from both the past and new ones. A new
combination that I have heard about is Nitrous (laughing gas) combined with marijuana
use. It is supposedly a potent combination and could call for more research. I did a
little on my own and found out a couple of things. Nitrous-Oxide, which is normally found
in dentist offices all over, is a mixture of nitrous and oxygen and is used to put a
patient to sleep for surgical reasons. The other kind going around in circulation is pure
nitrous, with out the oxygen compound. The gas found at the dentists office is supposedly
safe, as I consulted with a dentist on this topic, but the nitrous in pure form is
thought to kill brain cells. Although I didn't get too far into this research, I found it
interesting. I was just curious because the word around is that it is an intense high. In
no way am I implying that I have experienced any of this!
The myth No one has ever died of a marijuana overdose is true. This myth was put to a
test; it showed that animal tests revealed extremely high doses of marijuana are needed
to have any lethal effect. This has led scientists to find that the ratio of the amount
of marijuana necessary to get a person stoned is relative to the amount necessary to kill
them is one to 40,000. In other words, to overdose, you would have to consume 40,000
times as much marijuana as you needed to get stoned. In contrast, a ten to one ratio of
alcohol would certainly cause alcohol poisoning. It is easy to see how five thousand
people die of alcohol overdoses every year and no one has EVER died of a marijuana
overdose.
Marijuana is a gateway drug that leads to hard drugs. This statement is a recurring myth.
Currently, the Netherlands is a prime example of what happens when marijuana is readily
available. The Dutch partly legalized marijuana in the 1970s. Since then, hard drug
use--heroin and cocaine--have declined substantially. If marijuana really were a gateway
drug, one would have expected the use of hard drugs to have gone up, not down. This
apparent negative gateway effect has also been observed in the United States. Studies
done in the early 1970s showed a negative correlation between marijuana and the use of
alcohol. In 1993 a Rand Corporation study compared drug use in states that had
decriminalized marijuana versus those that had not. The study showed that where marijuana
was more available--hard drug use (according to emergency rooms) decreased. In short,
what science and actual experience tell us is that marijuana tends to substitute for the
much more dangerous hard drugs like alcohol, cocaine, and heroin.
The statement Legalization of marijuana would cause more car accidents on the highway is
yet another myth. Marijuana does impair a person's performance much like alcohol.
However, studies of the effects of marijuana on automobile accidents suggest that it
poses less of a hazard than alcohol. When a random sample of fatal accident victims was
studied, it was found that marijuana was associated with relatively as many accidents as
alcohol. However, a closer examination revealed that around 85% of the people intoxicated
on marijuana were also intoxicated on alcohol. For people only intoxicated on marijuana,
the rate was much lower than for alcohol alone. This evidence, has also been supported by
other research using several completely different methods.
To try and explain feeling stoned to someone who has never been there is very difficult.
A survey in 1971 of 100 volunteers who were regular marijuana smokers produced the
following results as to what being stoned actually is. Many users notice a greater sense
of sound, increased hunger (eating a whole week's food in one night), thirst, dry mouth,
feelings of increased empathy, and a feeling that time has slowed down. The majority of
subjects experienced no ill-effects, slept well and awoke calm and clear headed after the
acute effects had passed. A small number of users reported negative feelings of anxiety.
The feelings you experience are also influenced by the amount of marijuana you take, its
potency, the environment you are in and your emotional state before getting stoned. It is
probably impossible to describe exactly what it is, but the above survey is a fair report
of what happens to you when you get stoned.
The myth There is more than a thousand chemicals in marijuana smoke is true, but
misleading. The August 31, 1990 issue of the magazine Science notes that of the more than
800 damaging chemicals present in coffee, only twenty-one have actually been tested on
animals and sixteen of these cause cancer in rodents. Yet coffee remains legal and is
generally considered fairly safe.
The dominant fear about marijuana in the 20th century has been that its effects were
somehow similar to the dangerously addictive effects of opiates such as morphine and
heroin. Scientists feared that , like opiates, it had an extremely high potential for
abuse and addiction. Despite widespread decriminalization of marijuana in the United
States in the 1970's, this concern has remained the basis for federal law and policies
regarding the use and study of marijuana. But the discovery of THC receptor sites in the
brain refutes that thinking and may force scientists to re-evaluate their positions.
The next opinion we are to look at is that marijuana should not b legalized. Still people
seem to think that marijuana is a gateway drug because, supposedly bacouse it feels soo
good , that people might want to try biger and better things. Many important brain
functions which affect human behavior involve the neurotransmitter dopamine. Serious
drugs of abuse such as heroin and cocaine, int with the brain's use of dopamine in
manners that can seriously alter an individual's behavior. A drug's ability to affect the
neural systems related to dopamine production has now become the defining characteristic
of drugs with serious abuse potential. The discovery of a previously unknown system of
cannabinoid neural transmitters is profound. While century-old questions such as why
marijuana is nontoxic are finally being answered, new fascinating questions are emerging.
In the words of Israeli researcher Raphael Mechoulam, the man who first isolated the
structure of THC, Why do we have cannabinoid receptors?