Legal medical marijuana has been a controversial issue but there are some genuine health benefits to it. Doctors who prescribe medical marijuana for pain management have stated that the results and success rate that they have seen is astounding. However, medical marijuana doctors do say that there should be a limit and patients need to be careful as marijuana does an addictive quality. This is not much different to many other prescription drugs that doctors prescribe. Here are some pros and cons to medical cannabis according to medical marijuana doctors.
Pros
- Cannabis can help to relieve nausea and vomiting. For some reason it especially helps those symptoms when they are caused by chemotherapy.
- If someone is suffering from multiple sclerosis or paralysis and experiences muscle spasms, marijuana can help relieve those spasms.
- HIV, AIDS and cancer are often accompanied by loss of appetite. Marijuana helps to bring that appetite back in some capacity.
- It helps to relieve various different kinds of pain.
- Cannabis has actually been proven to be safer than some other medications that treat the same kinds of symptoms.
- Even before being legalized in America, marijuana has been used for its medicinal properties in other countries for centuries with good results.
- Studies have shown that smoking marijuana by itself does not make you at higher risk for lung disease.
Cons
- Too much marijuana use can severely affect your short term memory capacity.
- It can also cause problems for your cognitive abilities.
- While marijuana itself may not cause lung disease, smoking anything will cause damage to lung tissue in some form.
- Marijuana has had great success as a pain management tool but there is not a lot of records and studies that show this, only word of mouth.
- You can easily become addicted to marijuana and end up abusing it.
- If you smoke marijuana as opposed to taking it in pill or other form, it contains compounds that can cause cancer.
- Taking marijuana impairs to ability to judge correctly and has resulted in a high amount of car accidents and workplace injuries.
- Marijuana is known as a ‘gateway drug’ making it a lot easier to take other, more hardened, illegal drugs after having participated in marijuana.
Medical marijuana doctors are working hard on clinical trials to evaluate the effectiveness of marijuana when it comes to treating certain conditions and ailments.
While the pros and cons seem to balance each other out and one doesn’t really outweigh the other, if you are going through cancer treatment or something that medical marijuana doctors deem necessary to prescribe you medical cannabis for, it is still entirely up to you whether or not you want to fill that prescription. There really is no wrong answer, especially if you are suffering. If medical marijuana can help you through, then you shouldn’t feel bad about taking it. There are other forms of marijuana if you are concerned about the effects of smoking it. If you add it into your food then it will take about an hour to take effect but it won’t be as harmful or damaging to your lungs as smoking cannabis is.
Side Effects of Marijuana
Marijuana can carry short term and long term effects on people who use it.
The short term effect are:
- Disorientation
- Senses being distorted or underestimated
- Panic attacks or anxiety
- Lack of coordination
- Decrease in reaction times
Long term effects are:
- Low white blood cell count causes poor resistance to sickness
- A poorly functioning immune system
- Growth disorders
- Low testosterone
- Lung damage
- Brain injury
- Drowsiness or lethargy
- Mood swings
- Difficulty learning new things or understanding
While these side effects do not happen to every single person that comes in contact with cannabis, they are a risk that you take every time you decide to smoke or take marijuana in some form. You really just have to decide what is going to be best for you. If there is literally nothing else that is working, cannabis might be the answer. But, if there is any way that you can avoid the drug, then that is probably your best bet. If you do decide that this is the best course of action for you, just make sure to watch your intake and only smoke or eat what the doctor has prescribed for you to intake. Never go over the recommended amount and this should keep you safe from addiction and abuse.