Cannabis Prohibition

A Story by stmford06

Short Essay about the legality of cannabis

Cannabis

(Prohibition Part Two)

Industrial Hemp is a fast growing stemy plant of the cannabis family. It contains less than .30% THC and is only useful as a commodity crop. Federal law bans all types of cannabis so the farming of industrial hemp is illegal although some states permit hemp production. Ecologically hemp is an excellent monocrop that can be used to remove pollutants from the soil and is excellent weed control for property management. It is able to withstand temperatures down to negative five degrees celcius and does not need to be tended as it grows well in any soil or climate. Once harvested it can be processed into a variety of goods ranging from a green fuel source to building supplies, food, textiles, and medicine.

The hemp market is small due to its relation to marijuana and its legality in the states. Theoretically hemp could replace over seventy-five percent of everything around you. As a fuel source hemp contains more energy than corn and is carbon negative. Hempcrete and fiberboard made from hemp are used as insulation in Europe. Hemp oil is comparable to soy and can be used as biodiesel. Hulls can be ground into flour for bread and baked goods.

Medical marijuana is still a widely debated topic but the benefits of THC cannot be ignored. Administered by vaporization, smoking, or injestion or prepaired foods it is used to stimulate apetite and reduce nausea. Its also used in pain management and to reduce spasms. It is also beneficial in cancer patients as the use of marijuana has been shown to reduce the size of tumors. It can also be used to treat post traumatic stress disorder. Studies have shown there is a slight risk for dependence with marijuana. Research has shown the overall addiction potential for cannabis to be less than caffine, tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, or heroin, but slightly higher than that for psilocybin, mescaline, and LSD.

Synthetic cannabinoids are widely used medically to treat nausea, muscle spasms, PTSD. Side effects of synthetic cannabis include convulsions, heart problems, and possible adverse effects of the kindneys and liver. This is due to the processing of the compound THC into other chemical compounds. Synthetic marijuana has also been sold under the name “K2”. Several people have overdosed on synthetics due to poor regulation and oversite. Although synthetic and organic THC are very similar they are nothing alike and synthetics should only be administered under the supervision of a doctor.

Recreational use of marijuana is prevalent among adults despite its legality. There is no consensus on what a lethal dose of THC would be. The highest dose administered to large animals would be an equivalent of a person smoking three pounds of medical marijuana in a matter of seconds, but this is still well below a lethal dose and the average person would simply fall asleep before the full three pounds would be consumed. In the United States marijuana is a schedule one narcotic classifying as not useful for medical use, despite its use in the medical field. There have been no recorded deaths from the use of marijuana and any hospitalization from its use saw no adverse long term effects.

This week again I will use someone elses work to sum it all up. This time a piece by John Grisham, which is an alteration of last weeks “If-by-Whiskey”, titled “If-by-Cannabis”.

If By Cannabis

If when you say cannabis you mean the devil’s weed, the gateway to the nightmare of hard-drug addiction, the tempter of teenagers that terrifies parents, the cause of the feeling that flesh is falling off the bone, the impairer of judgment and driving, the origin of pointless mental excursions to the artificial nowhere of a fool’s paradise, the psychologically addictive near-narcotic that stupefies the user and saps motivation, perseverance, and determination the converter of our precious and capable young people into idle, self-indulgent, unhelpful stoners; if you mean the powerful not-your-father’s marijuana, the slow train to nowhere, the greed-driven motivation for a New Joe Camel and the big business of addiction, the carrier of molds and carcinogens into the lungs, the risky complement to alcohol, the manifestation of a "damaging level of permissiveness" in America, the threat to American economic competitiveness, the product whose illegality would push Mexican cartels to produce deadly herion, the psychoactive trickster that creates irresistible cravings for the unhealthiest food, the undesirable attraction for rowdy tourists and penniless drifters, the aptly named "skunk" whose smoke irritates neighbors and passersby, the precursor to legalized cocaine, the finicky and fragile hybrid whose secret indoor cultivation guzzles energy and pollutes our imperiled planet, the wrong choice between Drugs or Jesus; if by cannabis you mean the cause of cannabinoid hyperemesis, the poison scourge that brings on panic attacks and psychotic symptoms and sends thousands to emergency rooms each year, if you mean the placebo or mere pain-reliever that diverts the suffering sick from real cure, then certainly I am against it.

But, if when you say cannabis you mean the symbol of hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind, the miracle drug that treats dozens of diseases, the balm to humanity for millennia, the natural healer that tames the nausea of the cancer-stricken chemotherapy patient and restores appetite to the withering invalid, the safer-than-physically-addictive-opiates reliever of intractable pain, the botanical genus containing cancer-killing compounds and hundreds of chemical components we have barely begun to study and exploit; if you mean the good habit, the mild mood-lifter, the organic expander of consciousness, the instigator of new ideas and fresh insights, the promoter of peace and good fellowship, the spur to laughter, the soft, safer substitute for dangerous beverage alcohol; the aromatic plant whose legal commerce can create jobs and undermine murderous mobsters; if you mean the product whose legalization will uncrowd our prisons and enfeeble The new Jim Crow, if you mean the tested-for-safety commodity whose sale could pour into our treasuries untold billions of dollars, which could be used to ease our crushing debt, to cut counterproductive taxes, or as Mississippi Legislator Noah Sweet said in a speech about whiskey in 1952, “to provide tender care for our little handicapped children, our disabled, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools,” then certainly I am for it.

This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.