Cannabis, weed, grass, hemp, shit, ganga, marijuana; they are all the same.
Completely harmless, and completely misunderstood. 260 million people worldwide use it for its potential advantages. Those who don't use it, in my opinion, are missing out. In 1973, the drug was banned from use in Britain, much to the dismay of its users.
Since then up to now, people have fought for the right to use it as a drug, unsuccessfully. Many people believe that cannabis has a worse effect on the user than tobacco in cigarettes. This is untrue.One argument is that smoking cannabis when young can lead upto mental health problems such as schizophrenia, paranoia and depression.
If it is smoked before the age of 14 it is more likely for the user to have these problems later in li
...fe. But shouldn't this be upto the people who want to smoke cannabis? If they don't mind taking a risk then I say let them. Just like when people smoke cigarettes they are taking the risk of getting lung cancer, but that choice is theirs and yet cigarettes are legal. However cannabis is definitely 10 times worse for the lungs when mixed with tobacco, but alone, cannabis is a lot less harmful.When smoking cigarettes you are getting tar and many of the other chemicals in your lungs, but when smoking cannabis you don't get anywhere near as much chemicals in your body that will effect it in a bad way. Tobacco contains over 2000 other chemicals, such as tar and nicotine, which effect the body in negative ways.
Alcohol is also worse for the body than cannabis but yet that has been
made legal. Alcohol not only effects the body in the long term, but there is also the risk of drink driving. A lot more people die from drink driving and cigarettes, than from smoking cannabis.Another major point is that cigarettes and alcohol are addictive, whereas, it is impossible to become physically addicted to cannabis.
You cannot over-dose on cannabis, and people who die after taking it, die from there own stupidity. One problem with legalising cannabis is that if it were legalised, the tobacco companies would jump at the chance to produce tobacco based reefers so they could get more young people addicted to smoking tobacco. However, if someone buys some cigarettes, they are buying them for the pleasurable effects that come with them. If they are buying cannabis, they are buying it for exactly the same reason.There would be no point for people to buy cigarettes that contained cannabis, as the cannabis can give them the same effects. I think that the customers would be drawn towards cannabis, as its effects are less harmful.
Another argument against the legalisation of the drug is that users of cannabis would move on to using hard-core drugs instead. The government has done close to no research into whether cannabis users would move onto harder drugs such as heroine. The main reason people think this is because they believe that doing soft drugs, moves you onto hard drugs.Most heroine addicts smoked cannabis, therefore they think that most cannabis users will go on to use heroine. I don't believe this at all.
In some cases it may be true but if people are stupid enough to go on to
do heroine then that is there own fault. Most people know the consequences of moving onto harder drugs and so I don't think cannabis users would necessarily move onto it. Some people also believe that if cannabis was legalised the amount of violent crime in this country would rise. Alcohol is the country's problem drug and is responsible for a large amount of violence.
Most cannabis users drink little or no alcohol. For them, the drug is an alternative to alcohol, and not an addiction. If marijuana is not legalised for public use, then I believe doctors should be allowed to prescribe the drug to patients that really need it. I heard that it can be useful in the treatment of cancer, glaucoma, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and chronic pain.
If this is true then it could save the NHS a fortune, if they were to allow doctors to prescribe reefers in the place of other painkillers. Arresting people for carrying the drug is stupid as far as I'm concerned.What good does imprisonment do to those people? It doesn't teach them the mistake they made. Nor does it change the way they think. And it definitely doesn't mean that when they leave prison they won't smoke the drug again.
Prisons are overcrowded as it is, without having more people squashed into them just because they were having a smoke. Keeping cannabis illegal is also endangering the lives of some of the people who want to smoke the drug. If people want the drug they have to take a risk. If cannabis was open to public use in the same way that tobacco is, the users would
not be threatened by illegal suppliers.
For example, the small amounts of people, who apparently die from the effects of cocaine are actually dead because they have snorted soap powder. Obviously this isn't true for everyone but to some people it can happen. If cannabis was legalised not only would it give the public confidence to know that any cannabis available to them or their family was quality controlled, but also drawing the line between a soft drug like cannabis and a hard drug like Heroin would gain the authorities a lot more credibility with young people.Most importantly, unlike cigarettes, cannabis only endangers the user and not the 'innocent' public, so if someone wants to take the drug why should anyone else stop them? Legalising cannabis could mean more control over its use. Price, strength and quality could all be regulated. It is not the danger that makes cannabis illegal; it is the misinformed people who prevent it from being legalised.
