Effects of Marijuana

Effects of Marijuana
The most used drug in the world is marijuana. Did you know that on average one half of teenagers will smoke marijuana at least once before college and that one third will smoke on a regular basis? Legalization activists say that marijuana should be legal for several reasons. They believe that it will help America get out of debt and stay out of debt. I completely agree with that part of their argument, but when they go into the health issues is where I start to disagree. The activists say that marijuana has positive medical attributes. They say it helps with sleeping disorders, pain, nausea, spasticity, and relaxes the body. Although all of this may be true the side effects are not worth it. Activists even go on to say that marijuana has little to no side effects and is not addictive. They say that it doesn’t hurt your lungs; it causes no problems with your brain and doesn’t hurt your body in any other way. I completely disagree. Marijuana is a drug that has many negative effects and is addictive; it affects your lungs, throat, brain, heart and other factors of someone’s overall health.
The substance that gives you the high feeling in marijuana is tetrahydrocannabinol or THC. THC releases dopamine in your brain which then gives you the high feeling. The more dopamine released the higher you get. Releasing this dopamine over time can fry your brain and cause your brain to not release dopamine when it naturally should. Mentioned early was the fact that marijuana is not an addictive substance. False, marijuana is addictive. In 2008 marijuana was second in the polls of substance dependence. That’s right dependence, which means it’s addictive. Marijuana use accounted for 4.2 million of the 7 million people aged 12 or older classified with dependence of an illicit drug. This means that about two thirds of Americans suffering from any substance use disorder are suffering from marijuana dependence. Also, if it wasn’t addictive then why do marijuana smokers have withdrawals when they quit. That’s right if you smoke weed habitually when you quit there will be withdrawals. People have reported having problems with sleeping, not being able to eat, nausea, getting the chills, and have weird and unusual dreams. If it wasn’t addictive then these symptoms wouldn’t happen while you weren’t on the drug.
Did you know that marijuana has over three times the tar found in tobacco and over fifty percent more carcinogens? So it contains a lot more harmful chemicals, and it’s not smoked through a filter like cigarettes are. Not only is it not smoked through a filter, but marijuana smokers usually hold in the smoke for a longer time to get higher. This just leaves the tar and carcinogens in your lungs longer allowing more time for more damage. Smoking marijuana has been proven to cause daily cough and phlegm production, more frequent chest illnesses, higher risks of lung infections, and deregulated growth of epithelial cells in their lung tissue. A study of 450 individuals found that people who smoke marijuana frequently but do not smoke tobacco have more health problems and miss more days of work than marijuana nonsmokers. It doesn’t matter what marijuana activist say, marijuana can cause throat and lung problems.


http://alcoholism.about.com/od/pot/a/effects.-Lya.htm