Medical Marijuana Opinions

[SL2014]

What do you think about the possible legalization and taxation of Medical Marijuana in the US?

I think that this is a very interesting subject and I like to hear other people's opinions.

Please see my reasons and tell me what you think about each of them. :) Thank you!

My Opinion:

I think that Marijuana should be legalized, taxed and regulated (Like alcohol and tobacco).

Reasons:

1)__ It is VERY beneficial with people with some ailments, and with the lack of dependency and withdrawls is a great alternative to things like narcotic pain medication.

2)__ Taxing Marijuana can be extremely rewarding for the economy, a SINGLE dispensery in northern California paid over $800,000.00 in taxes in a SINGLE year... we could use this money during a recession to avoid cutting costs on government programs that people depend on.

3)__ There are very little downsides to people using marijuana, if it is eaten or used via vaporizor there are ZERO downsides other than the possibility of people driving while impaired, but this danger is exists with everything from Alcohol to NyQuil to Sleep Deprivaiton.

4)__ Not is single death has been recorded exclusively because of the use of marijuana.

5)__ MILLIONS of dollars are spent each year arresting, presecuting and detaining people that have consume, sell, or cultivate marijuana. 70% of the Federal drug enforcement budget goes to enforcing laws reguarding marijuana, the other 30% is divided between Meth, Crack, Heroin, Cocaine, Extacy, Date Rape Drug, Illegal Perscription Drugs, Acid, mushrooms ect.

What do you guys think? Why do you think that it is still Federally illegal, even for medical purposes? What do you think should happen?

[ruralnurs]

As far as legalizing it for everyone.. Probably the only people that would use it are those that already use it so it's not going to change anything, except we can stop arresting the otherwise harmless and save the money.

Would we save money? It would be taxed and expensive we know that. And most of the folks that would "need" it would be chronic pain, cancer what have you and they would probably be on Medicaid, Medicare, Disability, etc. and then guess who pays for it? You and me. So would we save money? I am not sure.

Again I am not sure if I am for or agaist it (except in mental illness) but not sure if legalizing it would save anything???

[meluhn]

Item #4 sounds like an internet myth. I recall years ago, a high school party where a stoned classmate electricuted himself after climbing an electric pole. Plenty of instances of stoned auto drivers crashing as well.

We could use the revenue for sure. It'd would be a profitable way to help shut down mexican drug cartels, reduce crime, encourage small biz, etc.

I was thinking the same thing about the mexican drug cartels. But it coulld also backfire and they might kick their cocaine branch of the business into overdrive if they lose money from pot.

[aloevera]

I used to think we should have everyone in jail smoke pot, that would calm them down...........then I realized more people would want to go to jail !!!

There are certainly two sides to this issue........legalization, I don't think, would cause greater usage.....smokers are going to smoke whether it is legal or not...

Legalization would save a lot a $$$ going to the court systems and jailhouses...and make room in jail for criminals.......

you can't buy cigarettes with food stamps, so how could you buy pot with them?? we would save in the long run.........just my HO

[meluhn]

Im in Oregon and we have medical marijauna available for patients that fill out the forms and have a doctor prescribe it. I am a hospice nurse and have gotten it a couple times for patients that wanted it. They enjoy it,it makes them feel good ( relaxed and pain free). It's not for everyone. Probably these patients used to smoke it illegally when they were younger, but hey they are dieing anyway, so they might as well go out happy.

As far as legalizing it for everyone.. Probably the only people that would use it are those that already use it so it's not going to change anything, except we can stop arresting the otherwise harmless and save the money.

When my uncle was sick he loved his marinol. It lightened his mood and gave him the munchies, which was beneficial to him. I always wonder, Why do people want to smoke it when it already is legal by RX in pill form?

[Grapenut]

RE: AWTY...you are talking about statistics, I'm talking about real people and the facts on the ground.

How did I know they were stoned? The guy who fell from the tower smoked a joint just minutes beforehand...The guy who closed a set of drilling rig power tongs on my hand cutting off three of my fingers had gotten high while on break. Same with the saw/power tool accidents, dropped loads, overturned cranes and a collapsed roof.

If you wrote a paper on the subject I can only assume it was from a position of advocacy, how many teachers will make the claim that pot smoking makes better students? Ask a cop if pot smoking makes better drivers. Can you make the claim it helps people to be better parents? What pot primarily promulgates is Apathy. People stop caring about themselves...frankly if you don't care much about YOU you'll not be caring much about others. Spend a little time with some young Oxy./Heroin addicts...ask them what drug they started with.

No, I am not some neo-prohibitionist, but frankly the "War on Drugs" wasn't the start of the worlds war on drugs. Take a look at what is happening in western Mexico right now, the govt. there had been taken over for years by the drug cartels...back in the late seventies/early eighties I spent a lot of time in central America and it was starting then. A previous poster was in favor of taxing it..."$800,000 from a single dispensary", how many Medical practices or Pharmacies treat enough patients to have THAT kind of tax bill? I would submit that this is NOT a medical dispensary. but rather a front for drug dealing that the local govt. supports so they can get the money. There is a huge divide between Prohibition and advocacy, there are many in Govt. and Govt. supported organizations who are advocating because THEY want the money. When I was in SF the requirement for access to a Mj dispensary was a letter from a "Healthcare Professional" this includes nurses, massage therapists, hypnotists, aroma therapists...anyone who can claim to be in a health related field. Specifically NOT a prescription from a medical doctor. For the few people that it can truly help medically it is not hard to find. For the rest I do not believe the use should be endorsed by any form of govt.

Amsterdam allowed the opening of smoke bars...and in a few short years the streets and parks became filled with Hard Drug users, that they don't now know what to do with.

Just my 2cents...

The fact that people had or caused accidents while working under the influence then is unrelated to legal use of pot, because it's illegal, and these things happened anyway. So you jump to the conclusion that if it was legal, there would be more accidents. As a matter of fact you jump to a few conclusions. This is a subject I have much more personal, on-the-ground, interactive experience and knowledge than I have any need to explain. So you conclude that I advocate staying stoned all the time, while we drive, while at school and work, etc. Quite the conclusion jumper. You conclude that anyone who smokes pot can't care about themselves or anyone else. Have you spent time with heroin or meth addicts? I have. Pot didn't make them an addict. As an adult (yes, an actual 'grown up') I have mulled the issue of legalizing pot, and it wasn't a snap decision. I watched society and people's lives affected by our laws concerning marijuana. I finally came to the belief that pot is less harmful to individuals and society than alcohol, and if adults want to have it for personal use in their home, it doesn't seem logical that they shouldn't be free to do so. As a matter of fact, I know dedicated, scholarly teachers and professors who smoke. I have known lawyers, medical professionals, and yes -cops, who smoke. And it should certainly be available to any person who has an illness with symptoms and suffering that could be relieved by it. I don't smoke pot, have no desire for it. But if other people want to have access to it without being labeled a criminal, I am a proponent of people having that choice. We have laws governing the responsible use of alcohol. The same would apply to pot. I'm sorry you lost 3 fingers. That must make some nursing skills very difficult for you. Just curious - did OSHA follow you around closing down construction sites? My husband was a project manager on shopping centers and office buildings in a large metro area for years. If you decide to go back to construction, I'd like to make a wide berth around any of the sites you work on. Sounds like you've got one of those dark clouds following you.

[nursenow]

I have worked with addicts and alcoholics for twenty two years...Mj IS a gateway to the other stuff, no If, ands or buts. Just today there was a national news story of an airline incident where a "Patient" dbl dosed after a visit to his "Dispensary" in a Legal pot state, dropped his pants, talked crazy and fought with the Airline attendants.

I spent most of my life in the construction and industrial fields and have seen more injuries and deaths caused by Pot than any other drug, including alcohol. It is the impaired judgment and slow response issues from it that caused these injuries and deaths(including one death where a fellow tower worker just forgot to hook up his safety line before letting loose his handhold at 300ft above the ground) I smoked the stuff in my younger dumber daze, but finally grew up. If you are a nurse you should too.

One of my best friends did find that smoking the REAL stuff had much better effects than Marinol for reducing the effects of Chemo. He insists that a single toke washed away the nausea and allowed him to eat, thus getting the calories necesary to have the energy to live a "normal" life, he did NOT smoke a bunch of it, nor use it many times a day. In other words he treated it like a medication. This was NOT in a legal state, did NOT come from a legal source and was NOT abused. Most of the people who are advocating it's legalization have a different agenda than TRUE medical need. Most of the patients who are using it are also abusing it.

My hopes and prayers are with "rocketscience", it is incredibly hard to get a "Pot" user to see the damage it does to their lives(and the lives around them) when so much of society is saying "It's no big deal".

What about Coors, Bud or Miller Lite? Are they "gateway drugs" Why the irrational focus on the evil weed when there are other drugs (whiskey...) that have and continue to do much much more harm to our kids.. There is no longer any debate on the evils of alcohol and yet those same anti-legalization people just turn the other way. Why the focus on pot?

[nursingpower]

When you are faced with a child (19) that has failed courses and graduated late from high school secondary to missing so much class and not studying because he is somewhere else smoking marijuana with his friends and then he fails/drops classes and takes 3 years to finish a 2 year college degree and can't keep a job due to company drug testing policy catching up with his "habit" and he can't keep a job where they don't test but he can't perform well, and he gets stopped by police 4 times while in high school and then gets caught with ecstacy and is asked to go "under cover" for drug enforcement agents in order to stay out of jail and he gets stoned while you are at work and he is supposed to be watching his grandmother with alzheimers while you work and then he brings a bunch of other smokers to your house with drugs and alcohol and then he gets a bad bag cut with some other drug and ends up having anxiety attacks for 3 weeks and he has to sleep with you because he is so frightened and paranoid, three trips to a hospital by ambulance and then ends up for two weeks in another city in the same mental health facility that Tiger Woods is in presently and he reports a new insight into his "habit" (not addiction) and promises to do better but doesn't because he can't perform well in school or get a job and his only friends are other drug users and you have a bill for $13,000 for said insight AND when your daughter (22) leaves home without notice after graduating from college with a fine arts degree to live with an alcoholic, drug using punk alternative rock musician and engaged in drinking, getting stoned until said boyfriend wrecks her car and tries to kill her with a skateboard to the head and she miscarries his baby and you have to cross three states to get her medical care and pay all her bills and bring her home and repair her car to lie around for a couple of months wallowing in depression and regret until you drag her out of the bed onto the floor and to the shower and threaten to institutionalize her if she doesn't get a bath, a haircut, new clothes, a new attitude and help around the house until she gets a job while you pay all expenses for her rescue---then you can stop asking this question because the answer will become glaringly apparent as it has to so many thousands of families who have had to deal with "harmless" drug use.

Punctuations?? New Paragraphs?? NO?? Anyways, these kids turned to drugs for a reason. Can't blame MJ or preexisting mental problems. Then you can't even say MJ was the problem. The boy was using ETOH and ecstasy?? A 19 year old supposing to be at home watching his Alzheimer granny?

The girl moved in with a known drug and ETOH user?? Wow, why would she do that? It just seems like these kids went through some type of childhood to reach the point to just jump into being multi drug users and co-dependency.

[wilsonsrn]

We need more research to base our opinions on.

[wilsonsrn]

I have taken care of patients who were useing prescribed Marinol in the past. Many have told me that smoking pot worked better for them and I know of at least one of my former patients who stopped Marinol because of side effects in favior of smoking pot, in that he felt more incontol of the doseing (Marinol being to strong for him). The biggest problem I have with Marijuana is that seems to increase psychotic symptoms in my psychiatric patients (I am a psych nurse). I feel pot should be contraindicated in patinets with a history psychosis. There are other chemicals in pot other than THC and little research has been done on how diffirent straines of Marijuana plants affect targeted symptoms. In Michigan we seem to have ingoried this issue and just told people to grow thier own. How are we going to collect any real objective data when we do not know the exact product being used? I think it would be much more in line with Evidence Based Practice if we had a system that limited the product to a few varities of this plant and collected data in a more controled mannior. To say that pot has no benifit in the relief of suffering for some patients is in my opinion to deny the reality of what a very many of our patients are telling us. Our role as nurses is to help find what is helpfull and what hurts. If nurses are to be relivent part of this issue, it is our duty to study and whigh in on the side of inproved patient care based on fact and not preformed biases. I think we all agree that drug abuse is a big issue. Use is another. We nurses need to help educate the public on the difference between the two. First we need to educate ourselves. How about some controled studies? It may be time to reclass this drug so we can better sort out the issues useing Evidence Based Research. Any one reading this know of any we can read? If so please post!

[aloevera]

When my uncle was sick he loved his marinol. It lightened his mood and gave him the munchies, which was beneficial to him. I always wonder, Why do people want to smoke it when it already is legal by RX in pill form?

They have probably been smoking it for years and enjoy it................A lot of smokers do not like to take pills of any kind..........MJ is a natural growing herb and pills are pharmaceuticals..........

That is what my husband says, anyway !!!!!!!!!:)

[elkpark]

I always wonder, Why do people want to smoke it when it already is legal by RX in pill form?

I guess that it's for the same reasons (whatever those might be -- I have no personal experience with either substance) that people prefer to smoke cigarettes when there are nicotine patches and gum freely available.

[meluhn]

I guess that it's for the same reasons (whatever those might be -- I have no personal experience with either substance) that people prefer to smoke cigarettes when there are nicotine patches and gum freely available.

I dont think so because, as an ex-smoker I can tell you that smoking cigarettes is a very pleasurable habit. Smoking pot is just something you do to get high. I never really liked the smoking part (back in the day), just the being high part.