Should Medical Marijuana be Federally Legalized?

You're kidding, right?

You were correct about prescription meds' side effects and healthy people abusing them. However, to say in the same breath that medical marijuana use is any more risky of side effects (long or short term) or abuse makes no sense whatsoever. Are you aware that marijuana use in teenagers is down the last few years, whereas prescription drug abuse is up? Getting high is getting high, and people will do it with whatever they choose/can. It doesn't matter if the high is coming in the form of a pill or an herb or a needle or snorting, etc. Those who want it will get it.

How does using marijuana to relieve symptoms of diseases teaching kids that it's good for their health any more than prescription drugs do? My kids grew up knowing that I use marijuana to help treat severe chronic pain (pain that pills don't touch AND that make me MORE sick). They also grew up educated about marijuana being used medically, and responsibly. They also grew to be young adults who abuse PILLS to get high, such as Ecstasy, Vicoden, and even cough syrup/pills. (Not for want of my objections, discipline , punishment, etc.!) Interesting that they respect the drug they grew up watching Mom use for chronic illness, and don't respect prescription drugs, wouldn't you agree? I am not a drinker in the least, yet my kids also grew up into young adults abusing alcohol . Although children do learn much of what they live (such as mine growing up knowing that marijuana isn't "just for potheads"), they also learn what they do NOT live (i.e., choosing to abuse drugs when they were never raised in a home with drug abusers). All we can do is guide our children, and then hope they will make choices that will be good for the welfare of themselves and others. We can't rely on society to teach our kids right from wrong; we must teach them ourselves.

The public is told that pills are good, and holistic treatments (be they in the form of herbs or other "alternative" medical treatment) are bad. I can't begin count how many people I've known who ABUSE over-the-counter drugs, because if they don't require prescriptions then they must be safe. And the countless more who are instructed on their prescription bottles to take one pill, so they take two or three to "boost" the results.

My mother is in the hospital in extremely critical condition right now, has been for weeks. Her liver has failed, she's not a candidate for a transplant because she has autoimmune diseases and her body would just reject it, and she will die very soon if they can't get her liver to regenerate itself. The cause of the liver failure? The pain pills and anti-inflamatories, etc., that she's had to take the last couple of decades. She's only 57, and is dying soley due to prescription drugs; drugs that she takes less than recommended by doctors , no less! Brain, heart, lungs, kidneys, and circulatory systems are just a few of the other major organs/systems severely affected by long-term use of the drugs prescribed to millions of people daily.

Correct, smoking isn't healthy. I'm taking it you're under the impression that smoking is the only way to consume marijuana. I only smoke it when there is severe acute pain that absolutely can't wait for any other delivery method, such as an upper GI attack. (Which isn't more than once every month or two, fortunately.) Otherwise I eat it (easily cooked into just about any food one would eat daily; fattening brownies not required), or use a tincture under my tongue to be delivered quickly into my system sublingually. One can also use a vaporizor to inhale only the cannaboids, with no smoke produced/inhaled as the herbs don't combust using a vaporizer. (That is the closest one can get to "healthy" if inhaling something that otherwise would be smoked.) There are other ways some people consume marijuana, as well; those are only off the top of my head as they are the methods of delivery I use. When I digest it, I don't get "high" in the least. The only "side effect" I get from digestion is pain relief.

Marijuana wouldn't be comparable to the "snake oil salesmen of the past century" is the FDA would regulate it, pharmaceutical companies would produce it, and it would then be dispensed via REAL prescriptions written out on pads of paper by any medical doctor. Then again, if these were done, people wouldn't think of the "snake oil salesmen" at all; they'd just accept that it is indeed a medicine . After all, if something is available via prescription and pharmacy, then it *must* be medicine.