<p>caregiver–is this what they mean when they say there is plenty of job growth in the medical field? ;)</p>
<p>I guess, since January, you can stand in almost any spot in L.A. and be within smelling distance of at least one Mm dispensary!</p>
<p>Wow. And if it gets legalized next month, do you suppose the two will merge?</p>
<p>I live in Michigan, where citizens recently voted to allow the use of MM. The problem is, the laws regarding growing, distribution, licensing, etc were not legislated properly - or says a local circuit court judge. The next town over had a big MM drug bust last month, and it’s become a very big deal. </p>
<p>My aunt lives in a small northern Michigan town. She got a prescription for MM for her chronic back pain, but she wasn’t impressed with what it did for her. Plus, she says she’s overweight enough … doesn’t need the weight gain from the munchies. :)</p>
<p>Even if desired, the FDA will never approve smokeable marijuana as a drug. The big reason is dosing. You need to have a regular dose and consistency in your drug for it to be approved. Drugs which vary too much amongst batches are not approved. Marijuana just doesn’t offer that. They would be open to inhaler formulation of THC. At one point, there was one in development.
In states with “medical” marijuana, you cannot use the term prescription.</p>
<p>It really should be fully legalized.</p>
<p>There are no permanent negative side effects. At one point, it was thought that it killed brain cells, but a researcher from Harvard found that the experiment was flawed. (It was tested on rats, but the amount of oxygen sent to their brain was so much that they died of suffocation, and your brain cells begin to die when you’re dead.) I think the best argument for it is that no one has ever, ever died as a result of marijuana.</p>
<p>I used to think that the whole medical marijuana thing was just a hoax to get it legalized, but I had to take vicodin after an accident and it made me absolutely sick to my stomach. I also couldn’t eat anything and got extremely weak and skinny. I ended up smoking, and it literally “cured” me. It gets rid of (at least for me) all feelings of sickness, allows you to focus on other things besides the pain, and helped me eat to regain my strength.</p>
<p>There are two negative things I’ve experienced about it. One is you gain weight from munchies, nothing you can really do there! 
The other is that, while you are high, it does make you (me) lazy. But this can be true with anything. You don’t take shots of alchohol and then write a paper later. As long as I smoke after I have all of my stuff done for the day, it’s perfectly fine. Since i’ve started smoking my grades have gone up from a 3.4 GPA to a 4.0. It reduces so much stress, and I cannot believe it’s still illegal.</p>
<p>The only reason this drug is illegal is because hemp (yes, it’s good for more than just smoking) is cheaper to make than paper and when this was first discovered the corrupt paper companies began to go into a panic because they were losing so much money.</p>
<p>Bottom line is that the hemp plant and its derivatives are illegal because it is a threat to existing industries with powerful lobbies.</p>
<p>Marijuana has been illegal federally since the 1920s. Pharma had nothing to do with it becoming illegal and has nothing to do with its current status. They stay far away from C-1 drugs. Most of the research on C-1s are from academics. Tobacco and alcohol products were specifically regulated in a way that they would be exempt from the FDA regulation process.<br>
They have looked at marijuana’s effect at certain diseases. When compared to preferred glaucoma treatments, marijuana is actually one of the least effective. It would be a 4th line drug.<br>
People have died as a result of smoking marijuana. They smoke it and their coordination becomes impaired. They then drive a car and get into an accident. There still is no good research on how long marijuana impairs a person’s coordination and judgment. The most recent studies say the effect can last more than a day.
For something to be a legal drug in the U.S., you need to have dosing information. In that sense, marijuana will never be approved.</p>
<p>I wasn’t talking pharma, I was thinking the booze and tobacco industries. They’d have the most to lose.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>But if it’s only legal for those with a prescription who get it at a pharmacy, it’s not a threat to those industries. There would still be a big demand for illegal pot, the percentage of people using it medicinally would be relatively small and probably a different population that those who use it recreationally. I suppose you would have prescription abuse the way you have it for Adderall, etc. but probably less abuse than there is for other drugs since it’s certainly not hard to score some pot. You can probably walk across any high school campus today and purhcase some.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Let’s reword that…</p>
<p>People have died as a result of drinking alcohol. They drink it and their coordination becomes impaired. They then drive a car and get into an accident.</p>
<p>And exactly how is alcohol any different from marijuana?</p>
<p>Fifteen states including Ca & Wa state that more people die from prescription medication than auto accidents-
Numbers indicating the relation to alcohol/prescription medications to those auto accidents are likely to be high.</p>
<p>
It’s a historical/cultural difference. People have been drinking alcohol in the U.S. since colonial times. It too was subject to prohibition, but it failed. Marijuana started to become popular in the U.S. in about 1900 when there was an influx of Mexican laborers into the southwest. Marijuana became viewed as an evil Mexican weed, and thus over time outlawing it became intertwined with anti-Mexican sentiment.</p>
<p>Another way that it is different is that it is quite a process to distill alcohol ( although our forefathers took it very seriously) but marijuana is called a " weed" for a reason- pretty easy to grow as long as you don’t overwater it.</p>
<p>( this guy’s history is interesting)
[Harry</a> J. Anslinger](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger]Harry”>Harry J. Anslinger - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Yes, legalize it. My husband has cancer and suffers severe pain. When the pain is too much even for his pain killers, marijuana really helps. Also, one of his doctors said that he doesn’t think a few of his patients would have made it throught chemo without marijuana.</p>
<p>How timely for this thread… one of the characters on Desperate Housewives just came home from the doctor’s office with a prescription for medical marijuana!</p>
<p>Here is a relevant article.</p>
<p>[Marijuana:</a> A bit of tarnish on pot’s benign reputation - latimes.com](<a href=“http://www.latimes.com/health/la-sci-marijuana-20101010,0,3819276.story]Marijuana:”>A bit of tarnish on marijuana's benign reputation)</p>
<p>well of course it is addictive- practically anything can be addictive- I should know!
But say when prescribed for treatment of medical conditions that have less successful allopathic treatments ( say too expensive or with too many contraindications), it seems to be well worth the tradeoff of potentially being addicted to something that can help someone function, when nothing else can.</p>
<p>I agree Emeraldkity4, but I still think it should be prescribed, not legal for everyone.</p>
<p>I’d hardly say that one woman becoming addicted to pot in the 60’s is even a good basis for an article, let alone a counterargument supporting a failed war on drugs.</p>