Marijuana/Con

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[edit] Anti-Legalization arguments

[edit] Why Marijuana should be illegal

Opponents of legalization make several points in their opposition to legalization.

Perhaps the strongest reason is "we don't know all the facts." Researchers do not yet know all of the chemicals of marijuana, and how they interact with the brain. Until a great deal more research is done, it is unethical to experiment on human subjects.

Marijuana may also directly affect the immune system, since one of the body's two known receptors for cannabinoids is located in immune cells. But the nature of the effect is unclear.

Critics of medical uses of marijuana argue that in America, doctors do not prescribe "potions" or "herbs" in order to treat symptoms of an illness; instead, they prescribe them to keep patients coming back, as they do with other prescription medicines with psychoactive effects like painkillers and valium.

The "productivity" argument against legalization is that any drug that basically relaxes its user is by its very nature reducing that person's ability to think, reason and be productive. That's bad for society in general, since it loses members who could be contributing to the well-being of themselves, their families and their communities.

[edit] Some individual points against legalization

• Some individuals are staunchly against mind-altering and see the legalization of marijuana as a step backwards. Many of these same people warn about the dangers of alcohol and smoking, which are already legal.
• Marijuana's harms have been proved scientifically.
  • In 1972, after reviewing the scientific evidence, the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse concluded that while marijuana was not entirely safe, its dangers had been grossly overstated. Since then, researchers have conducted thousands of studies of humans, animals, and cell cultures. None reveal any findings dramatically different from those described by the National Commission in 1972. In 1995, based on thirty years of scientific research editors of the British medical journal Lancet concluded that "the smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health."
• The U.S. Government and many medical researchers say marijuana use can be a stepping stone to much more harmful and addictive "hard" drugs.
  • Marijuana does not cause people to use hard drugs. What the gateway theory presents as a causal explanation is a statistic association between common and uncommon drugs, an association that changes over time as different drugs increase and decrease in prevalence. Marijuana is the most popular illegal drug in the United States today. Therefore, people who have used less popular drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and LSD, are likely to have also used marijuana. Most marijuana users never use any other illegal drug. Indeed, for the large majority of people, marijuana is a terminus rather than a gateway drug.
• There is some evidence that the use of cannabis can precipitate symptoms of schizophrenia. Incidence of schizophrenia is higher among marijuana users than among others.
  • There is no convincing scientific evidence that marijuana causes psychological damage or mental illness in either teenagers or adults. Marijuana does not cause profound changes in people's behavior.
• Marijuana has been shown [1] to cause impairment on a variety of cognitive tests for up to 7 days after heavy use. It is believed that because THC, the active drug in Marijuana, is fat soluble, that it can be stored in the body and released many days after smoking. This could lead to impairment in driving or other behaviors that, unlike with alcohol, persists a significant amount of time past when the user feels sober.
• The indefinite release schedule for THC that has been absorbed in the body could make it more difficult to safely regulate behavior that should not be done while intoxicated (such as driving, operating heavy machinery, etc). Before legalization occurrs, more research needs to be done looking at how long THC stays in the body, how it effects on cognition and/or reflexes, and how this behavior varies with different levels of drug use.
  • any active drugs enter the body's fat cells. What is different (but not unique) about THC is that it exits fat cells slowly. As a result, traces of marijuana can be found in the body for days or weeks following ingestion. However, within a few hours of smoking marijuana, the amount of THC in the brain falls below the concentration required for detectable psychoactivity. The fat cells in which THC lingers are not harmed by the drug's presence, nor is the brain or other organs. The most important consequence of marijuana's slow excretion is that it can be detected in blood, urine, and tissue long after it is used, and long after its psychoactivity has ended.