Assessing the Benefits of Marijuana

Introduction

The drug, marijuana, is actually not as lethal to human beings as cigarettes or alcohol. Further, it is much less addictive, being generally consumed in far lesser quantities. It is also not strongly linked to accidents, risky sexual conduct, and violence, the way alcohol is. Lastly, one can never lose one’s life to marijuana overdose. While a small share of individuals who consume marijuana do develop addiction, this issue can be easily treated. Marijuana in the form of a medicine proves effective in dealing with various acute symptoms such as wasting diseases, nausea and vomiting. Marijuana is very commonly used in America (DPA). The marijuana on sale and used across the nation varies greatly in its quality, besides displaying the likelihood of containing high potentially-lethal adulterant or pesticide levels. DPA (Drug Policy Alliance) supports regulatory framework implementation for controlling potency, educating consumers using labels, and safeguarding against toxic pesticides or additives. Appropriate regulation may control the product at all stages, right from the sowing and cultivation stages to preparation, packaging and distribution, thereby protecting consumers and ensuring reduced accessibility to minor children. Marijuana prohibition fails to offer the aforementioned protections (DPA).

A total of 14 states have implemented regulations that permit marijuana’s utilization as a medicine for treating diseases such as cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, and multiple sclerosis. While studies focusing on the likely medicinal applications of marijuana have been prohibited in the nation, international scientific studies have proven successful in identifying an increasing number of advantages of the substance (DPA). Organizations like the American Nurses Association, American Public Health Association, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, National Association of People with AIDS, AIDS Action Council, American Academy of HIV Medicine, and Lymphoma Foundation of America have supported medical marijuana access. Moreover, the American Medical Association, in the year 2009, adopted its resolution demanding governmental reconsideration of its marijuana classification, for facilitating the performance of additional studies on marijuana’s medicinal applications (DPA).

Thesis Statement

The plant, marijuana, has been considered damaging and even potentially fatal to human beings; however, on the basis of its medicinal advantages and economic value, the cannabis displays several positives which outweigh its negative points.
SECTION 1

Government’s response to the proliferation of Mexican marijuana in the U.S. How does Pollan argue that the government’s crackdown on marijuana actually backfired?

In Chapter Three of The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan states that “most of the marijuana smoked in America was grown in Mexico until the mid-1970s, when the Mexican government, at the behest of the US government began cracking down on pot smugglers. Soon after, the growers moved their operations indoors and continued to cultivate the plant. By embarking on the War on Drugs, the government only strengthened cannabis, a plant whose intoxicating qualities are so desirable that almost 15 million Americans risk arrest each month by smoking it” (Pollan, p.130). “America jailed more of their citizens than any other country in history, and every three of those were in prison because of their involvement with drugs, nearly fifty thousand of them solely for crimes involving marijuana. In the last years of the 20th century, a series of Supreme Court cases and government actions specifically involving marijuana led to a substantial increase in the power of the government at the expense of the Bill of Rights. As a result of the war against cannabis, Americans are demonstrably less free today” (Pollan, p.126). The federal government maintains that marijuana must be subject to the very same thorough scientific examination and clinical trials applied by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) to every other novel medication. This inclusive process aims at ensuring highest efficiency and safety standards (FOCUS).

The American government’s marijuana ban had the unintentional effect of ensuring considerable quantities of cannabis were secretly grown indoors, where they could be cultivated under controlled conditions. Further, growers could steadily increase THC levels, which is the psychoactive ingredient in the plant. Owing to indoor growers' fervent attention to all needs of the plant, the author Pollan considers these illegal cannabis growers "the best gardeners of my generation." Latin American drug policies derived from those implemented in the US haven’t succeeded at reducing illegal drug supply. Rather, they have resulted in a bloodbath that has claimed over 60,000 lives since the year 2006 in the state of Mexico alone (Newman). Several European nations have adopted “safe injection facilities”, medical heroin prescriptions for reducing overdose and HIV/AIDS related deaths, and other public health approaches. Republican as well as Democratic states are lowering inmate numbers through providing others options besides incarceration for minor drug-related offenses (Newman).

SECTION II

Molecular structure of the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. How did we discover the molecular structure of this agent? What are the effects on the brain, and how might cannabinoids actually benefit scientific understanding of the human brain?
Dronabinol or tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a sweet-smelling terpenoid, is the key psychoactive constituent in cannabis. In 1964, Raphael Mechoulam, Habib Edery and Yechiel Gaoni isolated it at the Israeli Weizmann Institute. Pure THC is solid and glassy in nature when cold. When warmed, it becomes thick and sticky. It exhibits extremely low water solubility, though dissolves well in butane, hexane and a majority of other organic solvents. As with caffeine and nicotine, THC’s function in cannabis is, apparently, safeguarding it from pathogens and herbivores (Johansson, Halldin, Agurell, Hollister, & Gillespie). Furthermore, THC possesses superior UV-B (280-315 nm) absorption properties, which also safeguards the plant against harm.

In the year 1988, William Devane and Allyn Howlett used radioimmunoassay methods for characterizing cannabinoid receptor existence within rats’ brains (Herkenham, Lynn, et al). Two years later, Miles Herkenham et al. mapped cannabinoid receptor locations within humans and numerous other mammalian species. Receptors were found to be most densely situated within the cerebellum, basal ganglia, and hippocampus regions, and sparsely located in lower brainstem regions that control lung and heart functioning. "High densities of receptors in the forebrain and cerebellum implicate roles for cannabinoids in cognition and movement” (Herkenham, Lynn, et al).

Billy Martin’s 1986 analysis confirmed what was assumed by several scholars. Marijuana's impacts may be caused by receptor systems or membrane effects. The latter was more logical as marijuana chemicals, akin to anesthesia, resided within fatty cells. Certain factors indicated the latter, though no technology was available for researching this. While numerous comments within the literature suggest two research directions to follow exist, the road is single. Herkenham and colleagues’ study findings revealed all were going the wrong way.

At the same time that brain cannabinoid receptors were localized, Thomas, Martin and Compton published a paper characterizing the link between cannabinoids’ behavioral potency and fat-loving (lipophilic) nature (Thomas, Compton, Martin).
Cannabinoid receptors’ location within our brain is linked to marijuana’s characteristic impacts. Of more significant confirmatory value is the fact that receptor sites bind to nothing but cannabinoids (or, at least, to no drug within the extensive list tested by the study authors) (Herkenham). Receptor characterization enabled Matsuda and coworkers to isolate an earlier-cloned unidentified receptor gene as endogenous cannabinoid receptor (Matsuda, Lolait, et al).

Martin and Lichtman discovered convergent evidential lines which suggest cannabinoids reduced pain through producing antinociception via several mechanisms at supraspinal as well as spinal central nervous system levels (Lichtman, Martin).

SECTION III

Why marijuana plants might have made the evolutionary “choice” to satisfy the human craving for transcendence and altered states of consciousness. What evolutionary benefit might there be to altering one’s consciousness, to being able to suppress pain, to forgetting?

Our desire for some form of transcendence of ordinary experience expresses itself not only in religion but in other endeavors as well, and these too have probably been more deeply influenced by psychoactive plants than we like to think (Pollan, p.145). Plants with the abovementioned property have actually, historically, become religious sacraments, leading to their careful, and even reverential, propagation and care. Hence, mankind’s desire for transcendence gave rise to novel survival tactics or evolutionary opportunities for plants with molecules capable of altering human consciousness.

Traditional studies on marijuana intoxication’s nature reveal that its key effects include a slightly raised heart rate, mild memory issues, slightly decremented performance on complicated psychomotor tests, and reddening of eyes (Tart). Individuals using the substance for the initial few times experience sequential sensory changes, and not altogether. Firstly, the individual might perceive increased clarity and brightness of colors, followed by sounds and visual structures (e.g., designs or paintings). (For instance, motion pictures and 2D photos might appear to be in 3D when on a marijuana high; this perception may sometimes transfer to the individual’s normal state.) This may be followed by the emergence of proprioceptive sensations. These effects might manifest in any order during one or many high states. Effects usually develop to certain levels before stabilizing, without elaborating further. The state of awareness may be termed "choice-less" as choice forms part of the consciousness function. Decision-making outside consciousness aren’t "by choice" as choice means mindful action. Direct awareness is a state where no choice is made nor action/decision occurs. During the flow of sensation and awareness of what occurs, if the individual acts, it is unconsciously done without the decision to move (Action, here, is managed by a process besides consciousness monitoring of awareness experience.) Complex action calls for activation of conscious attention, with the sensation utilized as information, stimuli or criteria for the action, choices or plans (Tart).

Awareness isn’t invariably experienced purely when on a marijuana high; rather, it is usually mixed with a small but reduced amount of conscious attention. Conscious awareness, conscious attention or consciousness entails a joining function that observes experience relative to memory images, prior experience, memory recording, goals, plans, expectancies, and so forth. Such consciousness can mildly intrude on awareness (Tart). But when awareness assumes center stage, the individual becomes “lost" within the experience, wherein there typically remains no recollection of what happened. This is apparently a state wherein consciousness functions don’t exist; every experience takes place at the awareness level and memory recording, consciousness, and attention don’t appear to be active. (Attention was probably absent and memory wasn’t recollected or was inaccessible to the consciousness.) This ‘pure awareness’ state forms one extremity of the continuum of differing conscious activity levels. At the other extremity is the state wherein awareness content is utilized in planning, inferring, deciding, and so forth, rather than being experienced for the sake of its primary sensory characteristics. That is, they aren’t experience, but information (Tart).

Summary

The idea that cannabis possesses clinical advantages is especially important in supporting the legalization of medical cannabis. The latest evidential flood corroborating cannabis’s clinical advantages will probably lead to an increasing number of societal members believing in its clinical advantages among the masses. This can successively increase societal support for its legalization. Policies in this regard are undergoing swift reform at present, and an increasing number of jurisdictions worldwide (including 23 American states, Canada, the Netherlands, and Israel) are legalizing it for particular patient populations (Sznitman and Bretteville-Jensen). Meanwhile, other countries such as Australia and New Zealand are, at present, giving some thought to similar policy changes. Simultaneously, in several other nations, legalization of medical cannabis has yet to crop up in public debates and the present policy agenda. This analysis indicates a reason underlying marijuana-linked sensory enhancement, and a move in attention to awareness from consciousness. Attention and consciousness are synonymously considered, though the latter is something more. But consciousness doesn’t exist without attention. Attention energy will likely move to sensory processes, operating less within deliberative, decisional consciousness processes. If this occurs, far more energy would be available for paying attention to sense information, leading to more graphic, detailed sensory experience (Tart).

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