Research Analytical Essay at least 8 pages

Professor Muñoz

English 205 MW

May 5th, 2015

The Healing Plant

According to the San Diego Union Tribune, San Diego’s first permitted medical marijuana dispensary, “A Green Alternative” opened relatively quietly earlier this year on March 18th in an Otay Mesa strip mall. “San Diego joins nearly 50 other cities in California that offer a process to legitimize medical marijuana dispensaries, but it is the only city in this county to do so” (Darrick). “The opening of the Otay shop on Wednesday was a major milestone for the city,” said David Blair, the owner. “Patients finally have a place to go for completely safe access,” said Blair, an HIV-positive San Diego State business ethics lecturer who smokes pot daily to relieve his symptoms. “We’re achieving a longtime goal.” Mike Arlotta, a customer, agreed that it was a big moment. He also expressed confidence the dispensary would be run well, noting it has surveillance cameras, a security guard and a metal detector. (Garrick). Marijuana has become a hugely popular and controversial topic these days. It is the third most popular recreational drug in America, behind only alcohol and tobacco, according to NORML.ORG- a non-profit public-interest advocacy group working hard to assure that consumers have access to high quality marijuana that is safe, convenient and affordable. NORML’s board of directors includes prominent scientists, researchers, businessmen and women, writers, attorneys and producers. Through learning about marijuana’s true nature, analyzing patients that greatly benefited from medical marijuana, comparing marijuana with other widely used drugs, reviewing the government’s duty to its people, and overviewing the marijuana-legalized states, one can understand that the benefits of using marijuana as a “green alternative” instead of taking dangerous prescription drugs, are far greater and that legalizing marijuana in all states would serve a due-justice to the patients in need of the famous plant.

Let us now examine an actual medical marijuana patient’s story from “The Culture High,” a riveting documentary that tears into the very fiber of the modern day marijuana debate to reveal the truth behind the arguments and motives governing both those who support and oppose the existing pot laws. According to the article published in the LA Times, at 4 ½ years old, Jayden David was taking 22 pills a day to tame a rare form of epilepsy. He had taken 25,000 pills total by the time he was 5 years old. Jayden had tried a dozen powerful medications and the side effects were devastating. There were “grand mal seizures” that lasted more than an hour. There were muscle twitches that contorted his “impish face” hundreds of times a day. "If he wasn't sleeping, he was seizing," said Jayden's father, Jason David. Fighting with insurance companies, the Davids lost their house, business, and essentially they lost their family. Feeling helpless, Jason David was at a standstill, not knowing how to help his son. Then one day he heard about a teenager who was expelled from school for using marijuana to help control seizures. He went to UCSF and was told that trying medical marijuana for his son would be advised considering Jayden was at a life or death situation. Jason immediately picked up some cannabidiol (CBD) marijuana extract from a local dispensary, and administered it to Jayden. After 4 ½ years of having around 500 myoclonic seizures a day, twitching, and head drops, the first day Jason gave Jayden the cannabis extract was the first day Jayden ever went seizure-free in his life. The seizures continued to dramatically decrease the following days and on. Unlike the dominant THC (the extract contains less than 1%), cannabidiol is not psychoactive, so the sweet-tasting infusion Jayden takes four times a day doesn't make him high. Jason stated, “I could see his eyes lighting up, and on June 1st, the first day I gave it to him, he started swimming, Jayden has never been able to swim before. The sudden change in temperature would give him a seizure.” Jason started weaning Jayden off his prescription drug medications after a month of being on the CBD. “He would suffer for two weeks after taking him off a pill and then boom he would become more human. Jayden started chewing; he was only eating Gerber food up until then.” The most intense and difficult drug to wean off of Jayden was the Benzodiazepines. Benzodiazepine detox clinics were not willing to take in a 7 year old at the time, but Jason continued to administer his son with the CBD and Jayden continued to improve and showed amazing results- coming down to taking only 2 pills a day versus the previous 22 pills as well as reduced frequency and intensity of seizures (The Culture High). As we can clearly see, medical marijuana is a revolutionary healing plant that can positively change patient’s lives such as it did Jayden’s. Not all patients get the opportunity to consume medical marijuana to possibly help their ailment or illness because it is illegal in most states. Denying patients like Jayden the very cure that can dramatically reduce their suffering is incredibly unjust and should not be overlooked by the people of America.

The United States Congress classified marijuana under Schedule I substances under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. This classification asserts that cannabis is equally as dangerous to the public as heroin and is more dangerous than cocaine, defines cannabis and its dozens of distinct cannabinoids as possessing "a high potential for abuse ... no currently accepted medical use, ... [and] a lack of accepted safety for the use of the drug ... under medical supervision." If we do our own research, we know that this is simply not true. By contrast, cocaine and methamphetamine - which remain illegal for recreational use but are allowed as prescription drug agents - are classified as Schedule II drugs. Examples of Schedule III and IV substances include anabolic steroids and Valium, respectively, while the law defines codeine-containing cough suppressants as Schedule V drugs, the federal government's most lenient classification (NORML.ORG) One must come to wonder, why is it that these dangerous and harmful drugs are legally given out in prescriptions to patients while medical marijuana, having many beneficial properties with no harmful side effects or potential for neither abuse or overdose, is illegal in most states? According to a report from the Treatment Episode Data Set, there has been a “dramatic increase in the number of poisonings and even deaths associated with the abuse of prescription drugs” (TEDS, 2007). The report provides that “many teens seem to believe the myth that these drugs are a safe way to get high. However when they are abused, prescription drugs can be just as dangerous as street drugs.” The prescription drugs in many cases harmful and addicting, especially long-term. More people die in America every year from prescription drug abuse than die from heroin and cocaine combined. These prescription drugs are not curing the problem at hand; they are only masking the issue and putting a temporary lid on it. The number of people that die each year from marijuana use? Zero. Another report shows results on the troubling trend of prescription and over-the-counter drug abuse among the nation's teens, “Between 1995 and 2005, treatment admissions for abuse of prescription pain relievers grew more than 300 percent” (TEDS, 2007). Another interesting question that The Culture High brings to our attention is, why do we see advertisements for prescription drugs such as anti-depressants and a number of other drugs designed to treat various illnesses (Symbalta, Humira, and Lunesta to name a few) being advertised? The answer is exactly what one may have guessed, profits. As horrifying as it sounds, doctors are getting paid by drug companies to endorse their product. As a result, often times doctors will prescribe patients the particular medications they are being endorsed on, not because it is necessarily best suited for that patient or their diagnosis, but because it is in the best interest of the doctor and his or her profit or bottom line. Many Americans are completely ignorant to this horrendously astonishing system that happens each and every single day in the United States. The prescription drug advertisements on television tell our society that we can take these pills to feel better while literally risking killing ourselves to do it. Our society is conditioned to believe that if we visit the doctor’s office and do not receive a prescription, then we have not really had a valid encounter. This leads us to think of prescription drugs as the only cure, not thinking about alternative treatments such as medical marijuana. This corrupted influence on our culture and neglecting of patients is unjust and should not be kept hidden from the public.

Despite a present-day, nearly worldwide ban on the plant's cultivation and consumption imposed by various governments, millions of people continue to consume and utilize the precious, forbidden plant. According to NORML.ORG, “Criminal marijuana prohibition is a failure. Over 20 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana offenses since 1965.” NORML believes that the time has come to end criminal prohibition and legalize marijuana. With legalization would come about a system of regulation, taxation, and of course, education. Because marijuana is classified as a Schedule I substance, it is therefore very difficult to legalize it, even strictly for medicinal use. This complicates the lives of patients in need of the plant even more. It is unjust to deny people access (by law) to the very thing that could cure their illness. So if marijuana prohibition has been such a failure, what has caused it to be perused the way it has? The Culture High highlights the issue of privatized prisons and discusses why so many more Americans are being convicted or are convicted more harshly as a result of marijuana offenses. The staggering 20 million people arrested since 1965 seems to be excessive and unjust. The fact of the matter is that privatized prisons actually generate profit from their prisoners being kept behind bars. A majority of these prisoners are indeed patients who were consuming marijuana as a medicine but they are now deemed as nothing but criminals. Ed Burns, former Baltimore police detective states, “The whole thing is about numbers, numbers generate revenue.” Stephen Downing, former LAPD Deputy Chief gives his interview about his opinion and experience with marijuana offender arrests stating, “Is it really worth a police officers time to bust someone for a marijuana cigarette, take them off the street, put them in jail, book the evidence, write the report, and then go back out on the street and tend to public safety after you’ve been gone for hours for one marijuana arrest?” The Culture High states that 370 billion dollars a year go into the underworld or the drug cartel’s pockets. The prohibition of marijuana is more dangerous than the potential of marijuana being “abused” of it was to be legalized. It is unjust for the government to tell us what we can and cannot consume and they should not be able to get away with it or their deceitful, profitable abuse of the American people.