Another claim is that people smoking marijuana are careless in traffic. Statistics show that in Britain and US accidents involving motorists marijuana smokers are very frequent. Yet most of these motorists drank alcohol while they had the accidents. So we cannot mention a direct effect of marijuana on carelessness in traffic.
A third claim is that smoking marijuana damages lungs and creates some aberrant lung cells. Again this claim is controversial. Anti-dope brigade says that a few joints are as hazardous as a packet of cigarettes while there are groups saying nobody has ever died of lung cancer because they smoked marijuana. An experiment observing two groups, one who smoked 20 cigarettes a day and the other who smoked 3-4 joints of cannabis a day, showed that both these groups suffered from changes in the nuclei of their lung cells which may cause cancer and producing too many mucus-secreting cells. There are various reasons why 3 joints are equal to a packet of cigarettes in effect. First, joints have no filters and people smoking marijuana keeps the smoke after they inhaled in more than the cigarette smokers. Also, the chemicals that cause cancer is richer in marijuana joints then the cigarettes. Despite this experiment, epidemiologists cannot find a direct relation between smoking marijuana and development of lung cancer. However there is one thing for sure; the immune cells of the people smoking marijuana are 35 per cent incapable of killing bacteria when compared to the immune cells of nonsmokers. The good news is for athletes. Unlike smoking cigarettes, smoking marijuana does not reduce the capacity of lungs.
There are six symptoms of marijuana addiction. One of them is that each time you need to smoke more to get the same effect. On contrast to nicotine, teenagers who smoke marijuana tend to get addictive more easily while people over the age 50 hardly become dependant .
The final claim is that cannabis has some long-term effects on the brain just like the drugs of abuse. There are similar elements in marijuana and other drugs of abuse that start some chemical changes in the brain. Varying symptoms have been observed in Marijuana users including anxiety and insomnia. However according to a university pharmacologist this does not mean that marijuana is as addictive as other drugs of abuse. The short term effect of marihuana supports this pharmacologist idea. Heroine and cocaine stimulates dopamine in brain. So does marihuana. Yet there are also non-addictive drugs that stimulate dopamine. So it is not easy to decide which category marihuana fits into.
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I think what we know about the effects of Marijuana is not very much. There are many things that must be clarified . There is even no consensus whether marijuana leads to cancer or not. Without adequate evidence it is not right to oppose the legalization of marijuana. According to an article in perkel.com1 there are many reasons to legalize cannabis. The most important one is that if cannabis usage was not prohibited then the usage of the legal drugs, namely alcohol, would reduce severely and this would decrease the abuse of alcohol and the number of traffic accidents. There are also some benefits of marijuana. As stated in an article from newscientist.com2 marijuana usage subsides the painful symptoms of multiple sclerosis. As a result, if the public is informed about both the positive and negative effects of cannabis, there is no reason to prohibit its usage.
Sources
Article from
“A Safe High?” New Scientist 21 February 1998: 24-29
1-) “Marijuana Telling Teenagers the Truth about Smoking Pot “
< http://www.perkel.com/politics/issues/pot.htm>.
2-) Coghlan, Andy. “Cannabis can help MS sufferers” 7 November 2003. <http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/marijuana/cannabisms.jsp;jsessionid=FCEENKBIMBAE>.
