John Rossi

Thomas Olah

Medical Marijuana

May 2, 2021

Medical Marijuana is a Yes

Medical Marijuana is a very important part soon for the medical field in general. Instead

of having to prescribe Opioids and other pain killing drugs that are typically highly addictive,

they can prescribe a drug that is much safer and less addictive than pain killers. Marijuana has

been used for pain for years and other medical conditions and there have been plenty of positive

results. The idea that smoking marijuana is evil, and a bad thing is the way of the past. More and

more people are coming around to the idea that marijuana in general is good, especially for the

medical side. This is due to more research and people coming out and saying how much more

beneficial it is for them rather than taking pills. It relaxes the patients who take it and lets them

remain calm and collective. For others it helps them get through their days whether it is to deal

with pain or nausea or other symptoms that can be repelled with marijuana. Marijuana is

important to these medical patients who need it and use it daily. There are others who use

marijuana to cope with their seizures. This is mostly children who have uncontrollable seizures.

The best example of this is Charlotte’s web, a strand of CBD marijuana that helps reduce the

number of seizures that some children may end up having. This strand has been proven to work

on some children. But this does not begin to show what potential medical marijuana can hold for

us in the future.
 Marijuana is not evil, even if people say it is. Marijuana is a type 1 drug, but how many

overdoses have there ever been of marijuana? The answer is zero. There has never been an

overdose on marijuana, unlike that of prescription pills. Every year there are thousands of deaths

due to opioid overdoses. “In 2019, nearly 50,000 people in the United States died from opioid-

involved overdoses.1 The misuse of and addiction to opioids—including prescription pain

relievers, heroin, and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl—is a serious national crisis that affects

public health as well as social and economic welfare. The Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention estimates that the total "economic burden" of prescription opioid misuse alone in the

United States is $78.5 billion a year, including the costs of healthcare, lost productivity,

addiction treatment, and criminal justice involvement” (National Institute on Drug Abuse). This

opioid crisis has been going on for years now and the solution has been looking politicians and

doctors right in the face, but yet they refuse to use it. Medical marijuana has so many less risks

than opioids, and if the person who was prescribed the marijuana does not like it, then they can

request opioids for the time they would need it. The idea that marijuana has more negative

effects then opioids is just false. And as stated in the quote above, the united states lose 78.5

billion dollars each year due to opioid misuse. This is a massive amount to just be okay with.

This is adding to the debt that America must pay off and this means more taxes for the citizens.

A way to help pay off this debt could be a marijuana tax. If the government has a problem with

this amount, then they could just put a high tax on marijuana. While this might stink, it is at least

allowing legal marijuana to be sold to patients. This can help lighten the load when it comes to

the amount of money that is being lost due to the opioid crisis.
 Medical marijuana has been proven to help people. There are millions of people on the

program at this point and they love it. It allows them to get legal marijuana to help deal with

their aches and pains. The best example though, of medical marijuana helping someone is

through a strand called Charlotte’s Web. Charlotte’s Web is a strand of marijuana that is

extremely high in CBD and low in THC and is given to children who suffer from having

multiple seizures a day. This allows the children to live a more normal life and go to school. One

case showed that there is a girl who suffered from multiple seizures each day, they were painful

and hard for the parents to watch their child suffer so much. They tried all the traditional

medicine but the best medicine they found was this strand of CBD marijuana called Charlotte’s

Web. She stopped having seizures all the time and she could live her life. “By age 5, Charlotte

was having over 300 seizures a week, about one every 30 minutes, Ms. Figi said. Charlotte was

in a wheelchair and used a feeding tube because she could not swallow, her mother said. On

several occasions, she was resuscitated after her heart stopped. The family tried dozens of

medications, but they did not work. “We were told by the doctor there was nothing left to try

pharmaceutically,” Ms. Figi said. Ms. Figi began to research CBD, a nonintoxicating,

nonpsychotropic compound found in cannabis. The cannabinoid was being used overseas to treat

epileptic patients. She found a grower who agreed to grow the hemp needed to extract CBD oil

for Charlotte. “I didn’t think it was going to work,” Ms. Figi said. But it did. Charlotte did not

have any seizures for seven days after starting the treatment, Ms. Figi said. “She started talking,

making eye contact, walking, and we removed her feeding tube,” her mother said. The seizures

were reduced to about one a month” (Sandra E. Garcia). Even though Charlotte was having over
300 seizures a week, they did not give up. Charlotte sadly lived be only 13 due to complications

with Covid-19, but she lived longer than she would have if she did not take the CBD. This

prolonged her life and let her enjoy a bit more time with her loved ones.

Medical Marijuana is extremely important to those who use it. It helps these people get

their lives back on track and work again without worrying about pain or nausea symptoms. I do

believe medical marijuana has the ability to help those who suffer from extreme anxiety, but this

has yet to have substantial evidence for it. Medical Marijuana has helped plenty of people and

will continue to do so. As I write this paper more and more states are thinking about legalizing

marijuana not just for medical, but for recreational. Most states have a medical program but

slowly more will open to recreational as well. But the medical side of marijuana has more to

show us, and we will find out all the good it can do for us in the near future.
 Work Cited

National Institute on Drug Abuse. “Opioid Overdose Crisis.” National Institute on Drug Abuse,
11 Mar. 2021, www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/opioids/opioid-overdose-crisis.

Garcia, Sandra E. “Charlotte Figi, Who Helped Popularize CBD for Medical Use, Dies at 13.”
The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Apr. 2020,
www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/us/charlotte-figi-dead.html#:~:text=In%202011%2C
%20Charlotte's%20Web%20CBD,company%20was%20named%20after%20her.&text=In
%202018%2C%20the%20Food%20and,be%20approved%20by%20the%20F.D.A.