legalization

However, popularity doesn’t mean the product is safe: The Department of Health and Human Services recommended the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reclassification, but there are inescapable health risks associated with regular marijuana use including a higher risk of stroke and heart attacks; negative impacts on attention, memory and learning in young people; an increased risk of developing schizophrenia; and harm to fetal brain development.
The number of daily marijuana users is now higher than the number of people who consume alcohol daily. While alcohol can also be abused (as regulations on sale and consumption reflect), there is increasing evidence from serious long-term effects of high-potency THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary psychoactive ingredient in the cannabis plant) marijuana use such as cardiac and lung problems.
Health concerns, especially among the African American population, are reason enough to object to the reclassification of marijuana as a Schedule III drug. Unfortunately, many people are choosing the grandiosity effect of smoking weed over the established health risks.

Millions of Americans believe marijuana relieves pain, reduces anxiety, improves your mood, and has no side effects. Are they right? Dr. Drew Pinsky, physician, addiction medicine specialist, and media personality, answers this question.

Conclusions: Higher quality evidence suggests an increase in adolescent past-month consumption of cannabis following legalization in several geographical jurisdictions. Consumption evolution prelegalization and postlegalization differed by age group and for young women and for binge drinkers. Consumption evolution differences suggest a variety of strategies might be required in efforts to lower public health impacts of cannabis consumption following legalization.

Today, a coalition of social justice, drug prevention, recovery, family, and faith organizations penned a joint letter to the leadership of the United States House of Representatives strongly opposing the MORE Act, a bill to federally legalize the commercial marijuana industry that is tentatively scheduled for a vote the week of September 21st.
According to the letter the MORE Act would not simply decriminalize marijuana, as some proponents have claimed, but rather “fully legalize and commercialize the drug. This would allow major corporations like Altria (formerly Philip Morris, makers of Marlboro Cigarettes), vaping giants Juul and PAX, and Imperial Brands (makers of Kool Cigarettes) to deepen their existing investments into the marijuana industry and expand those investments to capture the United States market.”

“Legalization will NOT stop the crimes committed by users who have no jobs to support their habits and prey upon you and I to get that money for their hit/fix.”
And while marijuana may very well have medicinal purposes, it’s not just the drug that makes our controlled substances dangerous and a significant crime and socio-economic issue in our country. The people involved in the illegal operations where drugs (including marijuana) are grown/produced, trafficked and transported, distributed to the TENS of THOUSANDS of dealers and MILLIONS of customers, are NOT good people! THOUSANDS of people are viciously murdered in Mexico every year as organizations vie for control over the markets and territory. 

If the changes observed in Washington are attributable to legalization, why were there no changes found in Colorado? The authors suggest that this may have been because Colorado’s medical marijuana laws were much more liberal before legalization than those in Washington. After 2009, Colorado permitted medical marijuana to be supplied through for-profit dispensaries and allowed advertising of medical marijuana products. This hypothesis is supported by other evidence that the perceived risks of marijuana use decreased and marijuana use increased among young people in Colorado after these changes in 2009.

In conclusion, if the states' initiative to legalize medical marijuana is merely a veiled step toward allowing access to recreational marijuana, then the medical community should be left out of the process, and instead marijuana should be decriminalized. Conversely, if the goal is to make marijuana available for medical purposes, then it is unclear why the approval process should be different from that used for other medications.

According to Kevin Merill, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officer in charge in Denver, "more and more criminals are moving to Colorado to exploit our drug laws, sell marijuana through the U.S. and line their pockets with drug money."
The Colorado experience is certainly troubling and has not been the panacea purported by legalization advocates.
In 2010, medical marijuana was legalized in Colorado.  In 2012, it legalized marijuana and in 2014 retail businesses began selling it to anyone 21 years or older. The consequences? In 2014, there was a 32 percent increase in marijuana related traffic deaths and since 2010 the number has increased by 92 percent. 

 “It is important to know that legalizing marijuana would not mean greater access to potentially effective treatment for children and adults with a medical illness such as epilepsy. Cannabidiol, or CBD, is not at all marijuana.”

CBD is not medical marijuana. CBD does not get anyone high nor does it increase appetite. It may be beneficial in treating children with rare forms of epilepsy, often difficult to control with medication or other available treatments, but it does not work for everyone with seizures.

“The stories of kids having fewer seizures described in the media are heartwarming and can possibly be of some benefit – just like many other medications available to treat seizures,” Dr. Patel adds.

What are the possible side effects?
CBD can cause nausea, diarrhea, or worse, affect the liver.

Dr. Patel states, “There is nothing natural about marijuana and its components. It is broken down in a person’s liver, similar to many other medications. It has interactions with other medications and is still not fully understood. If further studies show that CBD is safe and effective, it will be sent to the FDA for official approval. If the FDA approves this medication, it will be available in the form of a prescription and no laws will need to be changed.”

“Legalization would make our jobs as medical providers more difficult as we will not know what changing, non-tested preparations a child may be getting. I understand that parents are desperate and want to help their children, however, it is dangerous to give a child or patient a product unless it has been studied properly and is the same consistent product each time.” If the ongoing trials show that Epidiolex is safe and effective, then all people can have access to it through a prescription and know that it has been properly tested and is consistent each month. Medical providers will know how to dose it and it will be regulated by the FDA.

In summary, marijuana use is harmful to children and adolescents.  For this reason, the American College of Pediatricians opposes its legalization for recreational use and urges extreme caution in legalizing it for medicinal use.  Likewise, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) recently offered their own policy statement opposing efforts to legalize marijuana. They similarly pointed out that “marijuana’s deleterious effects on adolescent brain development, cognition, and social functioning may have immediate and long-term implications, including increased risk of motor vehicle accidents, sexual victimization, academic failure, lasting decline in intelligence measures, psychopathology, addiction, and psychosocial and occupational impairment.” 

Marijuana should not be legalized in America or the UK.

Pollster Dan Jones & Associates found that only a third of Idaho residents want to legalize pot, 64 percent oppose and the rest didn’t know.

• 18-24 year-olds oppose pot legalization by 55-47 percent
• 25-34 year-olds oppose it by 61-34 percent
• Idaho Republicans are especially against legalizing marijuana, 80-19 percent.
• 49 percent of Idaho Democrats favor decriminalization of marijuana use, while 48 percent oppose.
• Among political independents, 59 percent oppose legalization, 38 percent favor.

"Marijuana is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, when in fact, 295 Coloradans died two years ago of prescription drug overdoses," he notes. 
In 2012, 36 drivers who tested positive for marijuana were involved in fatal car crashes, according the Colorado Department of Transportation. And 19-year-old Levy Thamba jumped to his death after consuming six times the recommended dose of a marijuana edible in April 2014

THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SMOKED POT AND WHAT THEY (PRO-POT ADVOCATES) CALL "MEDICAL" MARIJUANA.    High at work ..
Last month, a state judge directed an employer and insurer to reimburse an injured worker for medical marijuana prescribed to relieve pain resulting from a lower back injury.   
 

States that legalized medical marijuana had higher rates of marijuana use. Future research needs to examine whether the association is causal, or is due to an underlying common cause, such as community norms supportive of the legalization of medical marijuana and of marijuana use.

In spite of the widespread effort to normalize marijuana, Montana knows firsthand the societal problems it can cause.
By 2011, Montana had the sixth-highest rate of youth marijuana use in the country and the fourth-highest rate of youth addiction.
I heard of growers destroying neighborhoods, reducing the values of homes through the foul language, harassment and stench of crowds at the dispensaries. Parents complained that kids could not play in their own yards. Multiple dispensaries set up near schools, targeting our youth.

Coats was angry because Dish Network fired him in 2010 after his random drug test came back positive for traces of pot.

“I urge caution,” he said at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington last week. When states promote something that is not good for people, he said, they need to be prepared for “unintended consequences.”

• Florida should not legalize marijuana because it is a gateway drug that is addictive and damaging to the teenage brain. Moreover, without FDA regulation there is no way to monitor the drug’s potency.
• He then fell into the habit of taking pills in order to maintain the buzz he got from pot.
• It is out of love for our children, for those like my son, that we must say no (to legalizing marijuana).