The drug culture they spawned and parental usage and tolerance made succeeding generations less rigorous in their battle to stop usage by young people; legalizing MM is a symptom of this conflict, not a cause.
CON:
Medical marijuana laws contribute to an epidemic of teenage use. Adolescents who smoke marijuana regularly do worse in school, drop out at twice the rate of non-users and earn less as adults. Preventing teenage use should be our main concern. However, according to the Monitoring the Future survey, in 2013, one-third of U.S. high school seniors who lived in medical marijuana states said they got the drug from someone with a medical card.
Between 2005 and 2011, teenage marijuana use increased dramatically in the United States, and it didn’t increase equally everywhere. According to data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, teen use increased by 33 percent in states with medical marijuana laws, but only by 6 percent in the rest of the country. If it weren’t for states with medical marijuana laws, teenage use in the United States would barely have increased at all.22
PRO:
Medical Marijuana when properly controlled does not add to highway carnage. There is no doubt that more deaths from marijuana usage are up, but only because it is more readily available and legal in almost half the states. The more people using marijuana, the more likely there will be incidents of death and injuries. However, it is true that the states with laxer MM laws are experiencing higher incidents than those localities with more stringent rules.
As with any newly liberated sector, abuses will occur. When liquor laws were redacted after prohibition, auto fatalities soared during the first years and through the war years 1933-1950. They moderated somewhat as education programs were put in place and DUIs have begun a slow descent in this century. However, states with stricter state laws involving MM have not seen the carnage more liberalized areas have experienced.
Medical marijuana laws increase the carnage on our highways. Between July 2009 and July 2011, Colorado’s medical marijuana registry went from just over 10,000 patients to more than 150,000.16 So researchers from the University of Colorado examined traffic fatalities in Colorado and thirty-four non-medical-marijuana states for the two-year period beginning July 2009.
In the thirty-four non-medical-marijuana states, there was no increase in traffic fatalities caused by either alcohol- or marijuana-impaired drivers. In Colorado, there was no increase in fatal car accidents caused by alcohol-impaired drivers. However, in the two years from July 2009 to July 2011, Colorado traffic fatalities caused by marijuana-impaired drivers doubled. Loosening marijuana laws makes our roads more dangerous.
PRO:
Patients report and researchers indicate the side effects of MM are minimal. In ongoing studies conducted by our dispensary and others as well as, researchers discovered the side effects of a properly executed MM program minimizes the side effects experienced by patients. In fact, our New Jersey dispensary created a video of actual patients describing their ongoing experiences with MM. It is viewable at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXoJvJEeK8Y. Remember, there are more than 600 strains of marijuana and matching the right strain with the condition being treated is an important element in any regimen.
For more than 50 years, marijuana research has been severely restricted in the United States. Patients only obtain less than 20% of the potency when using MM in smoking form.
However, the rest of the world, especially Israel and France, are doing research in extracting the active ingredients present in MM. Scientists in these and other countries have shown the efficacy of its usage in non-smoking forms. Often these cannabinoids are very effective in providing succor with limited side-effects. Using extraction may also ease the problem of abusing MM.
CON:
Prescription cannabinoids work better than marijuana and have fewer side effects. In the U.S., the FDA approves medications that benefit people and have few side effects. The teenage marijuana epidemic and increased traffic deaths are horrible side effects to medical marijuana laws.