Medical marijuana has changed the communities of many states, those being: Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania; Kentucky is not on the list of legalized states, and with all the benefits, it’s hard to see why not. Medical marijuana stops epileptic seizures, slows the effects of Alzheimer’s, and even stops cancer from spreading.
3.4 million People are currently living with epilepsy within the United States, so you could only imagine the number of people living in our state while suffering from it. Though there is no found permanent cure, there is a very powerful, non-lethal, short term cure that has been proven to work countless of times over; medical marijuana. Sanjay, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, lead the story of a five year old girl named Charlotte Figi, who struggled from around 300 seizures a week; she could hardly live a normal life due to her constant stream of life threatening moments. In this story, the family who Sanjay interviewed was strictly against the use of weed in almost a religious sense, but they were running low on options for their little girl, and the only hope that they had left was a special marijuana that was grown purely for the effects of helping disorders and diseases. This type of marijuana is breed leaving out the chemical that induces the effect of being high (THC) and leaves the chemical which contains the beneficial properties (cannabidiol); medical marijuana. Charlotte was given an edible version of the special weed and stopped having seizures for almost an entire week. Medical marijuana has been proven to work in many cases, but dismissing this as an average case would be crazy, someone who went from 300 to just 1 seizure in a week after such a treatment is pure proof of its abilities.
Over 5 million people in the United States are currently living with Alzheimer’s, and as many as 16 million will have the disease by 2050. Though that seems like a long time away, it does not make the disease any less terrifying, and without a cure, there is only so much we can do to ease the pain. What if there was a remedy that slowed the effects of something so devastating to the people and families this is happening to? What if it wasn’t legal in your state, preventing you from receiving something so detrimental? As someone who has personally seen the struggle of Alzheimer’s, I wish I knew about the effects of medical marijuana beforehand, but even if I did, we would’ve had to move to receive that kind of treatment. Many people think moving is a little much to receive something so harmless that really only has beneficial perks.
An estimated 14,738,719 people in the United States have cancer, and Kentucky alone has the highest mortality rate out of any other state with around 10,000 people dying every year… so just why has something that is proved to even slow the process of cancer unobtainable to the public of Kentucky. Cannabidiol, a chemical in marijuana, stops cancer by turning off a gene called Id-1; the study, published in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, found that cancer cells make more copies of this gene than non-cancerous cells, and it helps them spread through the body.
Even if there were hard, extremely unhealthy symptoms of medical marijuana, witch none have been found throughout all of the extensive tests and studies done, the overwhelming benefits would make people consider taking it anyways. Medical marijuana isn’t this lazy good for nothing drug that makes you high of your feet; a California hippie would get a better high off a dead leaf he found outside. This type of weed is extremely low in the type of chemical that makes it the stereotypical stoner remedy, so if it doesn’t make you high or have any extremely harmful side effects, then why isn’t it legal here?
Bibliography
https://www.alz.org/documents_custom/facts_2015/alz_ff_kentucky.pdf?type=interior_map&facts=undefined&facts=facts. 2015. web. 15 11 2017.
Welsh, Jennifer and Kevin Loria. http://www.businessinsider.com/health-benefits-of-medical-marijuana-2014-4/#-can-help-control-epileptic-seizures-3. 20 4 2014. web. 15 11 2017.