Marijuana: Should It Be Legalized?
By Shoshana Green
Marijuana is a commonly used illicit drug that people smoke. Many times, the first time people try Marijuana they become addicted. This drug should be prohibited as a recreational drug because people use it to get high. The use of Marijuana, is not only illegal, it is dangerous and addictive. Except for the feeling of getting high, nothing good comes out of smoking this drug. Though the high might feel good when it first happens, Marijuana slowly destroys your brain cells and your body every time you take in the thick smoke from the cigarette. This is just one of many reasons why Marijuana should never become legalized.
Marijuana is a dried up, green or grey colored collection of cut up leaves from a plant called the Cannabis Sativa, or the hemp plant, that have been chemically altered. The usual use of Marijuana includes rolling up the dried, crushed materials of the plant into a cigarette called a “joint”. It can also be smoked in “blunts”, which are cigars that have been emptied out and filled with the Marijuana leaves, and a water pipe called a “bong”. Sometimes, people will brew it into a special tea or bake it into foods such as brownies or cookies. But whatever way a person uses it, it has the same effect: A high. Unfortunately, along with that brief high, Marijuana causes plenty of problems with your health, long-term and short-term.
Some of the short-term effects of Marijuana usage consist of memory problems, unclear perception abilities, anxiety issues, dry mouth and throat, and increased heart rate. Long-term effects of Marijuana smoking include mental, physical, and emotional damage, along with tons of cancer-causing agents. These repercussions are simply not worth any “high”.
Marijuana is also highly addictive, meaning the first time a person tries to smoke a “joint”, he or she could easily become hooked on the drug. This drug contains nothing good in it. Although originally natural, today’s Marijuana has over 400 chemicals in it that can effortlessly hurt your body. Through testing it has been proven that because Marijuana has so many chemicals in it, a person who smokes a pack a day of normal cigarettes takes in fewer chemicals than a person who smokes Marijuana only four times a week. The differences between regular cigarettes and “joints” are huge. Even though both of them are extremely bad for you, Marijuana is worse, mostly because of how terrible the chemicals are and what they do to you. Many people believe that Marijuana is less dangerous when used as a medicine.
Marijuana can be used as medicine. There are doctors who prescribe Marijuana to certain patients for pain management and other purposes. However, although it is labeled as a medicine it is still very dangerous. Just because people use Marijuana as a medicine, it still has plenty of short-term and long-term negative effects. Additionally, because it is smoked, it still can cause cancer. Regardless of whether Marijuana is considered and used as a medicine, people will still use it as a drug. This means that people can still abuse the prescription and may easily become hooked on the drug. That is just how prescriptions work. People often ignore the fact that the drug was “prescribed” for a certain purpose and get addicted. It is that simple.
Prescribed Marijuana is also much different than buying Marijuana off the street. If a doctor prescribes a person with a small dose of Marijuana for medicinal purposes, the drug is considered a controlled dosage. So a person would have to seriously overuse the amount of Marijuana prescribed to get the high, which is the illegal way of using Marijuana in the first place. If a person uses the prescribed drug in the correct manner, it is not as bad for them as smoking a “joint”. Marijuana doesn’t only cause a high, it also gives promotes weight gain.
Marijuana has chemicals in it that cause people to get a symptom referred to as “The Munchies”. This symptom causes people who smoke Marijuana to endure intense hunger right after smoking a “joint”. The hunger these people get from smoking the Marijuana causes them to eat more because they believe they are hungry. Eating more than these people usually eat causes weight gain at an incredible rate. Therefore, Marijuana is a huge part of weight gain. But this weight gain doesn’t only occur to adults. Teenagers who use Marijuana get the same, negative effects that any other adult would develop.
One of the largest groups of people to use Marijuana is young people and teenagers. There are many reasons why kids start to smoke the drug. Usually it is curiosity, fitting in, or just because they think it looks cool. The teenagers might also try Marijuana because their friends are doing it or their parents are doing it. The teenagers’ environments like home or school help clarify if the kid will start smoking Marijuana.
Once people start Marijuana, it is extremely hard to stop. If people become addicted enough to this illegal drug, they could get in serious trouble. Police already bring people to jail for possessing and exploiting Marijuana. When they find anyone using the drug, they bring that person to jail. It is a severe offense for using Marijuana. Younger people that try Marijuana at an early age are more likely to start more dangerous drugs later on.
Another use of Marijuana is lacing it with other drugs. These other drugs are usually just as illegal and just as bad for you, such as Cocaine. Mixing Marijuana with cocaine is an extremely bad idea. The Marijuana is already not good for you, but lacing it with Cocaine gives it a more intense high and also makes it worse for you.
Marijuana is an illegal drug. Obviously, this means that there are reasons why it is illegal. If Marijuana didn’t have so many chemicals, wasn’t so addictive, and didn’t have so many terrible side effects, maybe it would be a legalized drug. But because people abuse the drugs medical purposes and use Marijuana in the wrong types of ways, it should not ever become a legal substance.
Works Cited
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