Marijuana Horticultural Revolution Medical and Legal Battle
Marijuana: A Horticultural Revolution, A Medical and Legal Battle
For years there has been a wonder drug, which has befriended countless sick patients in a number of countries. A relatively inexpensive drug that is not covered by health care plans, which has aided the ill both mentally and physically--marijuana. Significant scientific and medical studies have demonstrated that marijuana is safe for use under medical supervision and that the cannabis plant, in its natural form, has important therapeutic benefits that are often of critical medical importance to persons afflicted with a variety of
Life-threatening illnesses. Courts have recognized marijuana's medical value in treatment and have ruled that marijuana can be a drug of "necessity" in the treatment of glaucoma, cancer, AIDS, and multiple sclerosis. From the collection of information we now have on marijuana's health benefits for the ill, there is no longer any reason to keep it illegal. It should therefore be legal for licensed physicians to prescribe marijuana for terminal patients for whom it
Offers the only reasonable opportunity for living without unbearable pain.
Marijuana has been used many times to help ease pain and suffering. It often eases nausea in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, reduces the pain of AIDS patients and lowers eye pressure in glaucoma sufferers. Cancer and AIDS patients often lose a lot of weight, either due directly to their illness or indirectly to the treatment of the illness. Dramatic weight loss puts there
Lives in even more danger. Marijuana stimulates the appetite, thus enabling patients to eat more and gain weight, which in turn strengthens the immune system.
So if there are so many benefits, then why is marijuana not legal? Many states contend that the ban on medical marijuana is necessary to prevent drug abuse and the availability of illicit drugs and to control the purity of medicinal drug products. These states have no compelling interest in intervening to needlessly prolong terminal patients' suffering. States should allow the medical use of marijuana under strict regulations, rather than uphold an outdated drug classification scheme.
While federal agencies adamantly maintain marijuana has "no accepted medical use in treatment in the United States," the medical prohibition has come under strong legal challenge from seriously ill Americans who have been arrested on marijuana-related charges....