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Legalization of Marijuana

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Legalization of Marijuana: Benefits and Statistics The topic of legalizing marijuana has been a topic of controversy for quite some time now not only throughout our local streets, but throughout the local and into the state government. The legalization of marijuana is such a controversial topic because some are for it and some are against it. People are for the legalization because of the great uses it has towards medicine, the money that could come from the taxation of legalized marijuana, and the emptying of prisons because of the releases of marijuana offenses. The list could go on and on. Other people are against the legalization because it is considered a “gateway drug”, or because the legalization of marijuana would eventually …show more content…

Medical marijuana can be used to treat many different illnesses such as chronic pain relief, nausea, cancer and chemotherapy, arthritis, fibromyalgia, Alzheimer’s, spasticity, glaucoma, and many movement disorders (NORML.org). In my opinion, it medical marijuana is a huge help to those that are in pain and suffering. The people I know that use medicinal marijuana say that it is a huge help to them because it literally takes the pain away and even though there are a lot of known chemicals in marijuana, it is still a plant, and it can be easily accessible to those in need. Steven Kotler states that many medicinal marijuana users say that they prefer using marijuana rather than taking prescription drugs such as vicodin or morphine for their pain. This puts a damper into the pharmaceutical industries because if marijuana was fully legal for recreational use, many different pharma companies would be in competition with the plant because of all its medical uses. In 2009, the pharmaceutical market was worth $837 billion, and if all goes well, will top $1 trillion by 2014. This could be lost with the legalization of medical marijuana (Kotler). The medical uses of marijuana continue to grow, and with more conducted research, medicinal

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