Informative Essay On Medical Marijuana

900 Words4 Pages

Over several decades, marijuana has been frowned upon by the United States federal government; they passed the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 which effectively taxed the sales of marijuana. In the 1970’s, President Nixon put marijuana into the Controlled Substances Act. The Controlled Substance Act established Schedules for ranking substances according to their dangerousness and potential for addiction. As of recent years, some states have passed bills for the approved use of marijuana for medicinal use. Some use of medical marijuana include that is reduces severe seizures in children that have epilepsy, helps cancer patients deal pain, and helps people deal with poor appetite and weight loss caused by chronic illness, such as HIV. An interview …show more content…

In a review conducted by the University of Arkansas, “cannabinoids significantly reduced vomiting and nausea in breast cancer patients following breast surgery. In addition, medicinal marijuana can serve as an appetite stimulant to improve cancer treatment related anorexia.” During an interview that was held by Kayt Sukel, she asked David Casarett a practicing doctor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia a few questions. One of the questions that she asked was, “What therapeutic uses is marijuana likely to be put to next?” Doctor Casarett answered, “As for the future, the idea that some of the molecules in marijuana may help with cancer is not crazy. There are laboratory studies showing that some of the drug's compounds may reduce the cell division rate of tumors and the rate at which those tumors develop new blood vessels. Such findings suggest that these molecules may one day be an important part of a cancer treatment regimen” (Kayt 2015). The full potential of medicinal marijuana has not been realized as a part of cancer treatment. Do with the fact of legal restrictions which are prohibiting researchers from conducting clinical trials that are necessary to fully understand how medicinal marijuana can