Legalizing Marijuana Persuasive Essay

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
REASONING
Furthermore, marijuana allows patients to have an increase in their appetite and enables patients to gain weight. Chemotherapy causes a decrease in appetite to cancer patients and prevents patients from being able to maintain or gain weight (James). A University of California research team concluded that people smoking marijuana for medical uses can, on average, gain an additional four pounds over a two day period (James). Overall, the studies show that medical marijuana can provide patients with benefits that other drugs cannot provide like better health and a better life.
Second, marijuana should be legalized nationally, because a synthetic and less effective form of the drug is already available by prescription. The drug Marinol possesses the main active ingredient that is in marijuana, THC, and is available by prescription in pill form (Alexander). Evidently, Marinol provides a synthetic version of marijuana, but takes longer to work than smoking marijuana (Alexander). Also, patients get higher by orally taking Marinol compared to smoking marijuana which can cause an enormous amount of discomfort (Alexander). Specifically, patients are not getting to use medical marijuana rather a less effective knock off version of the drug.
Additionally, Marinol only contains a small amount of the active ingredients in marijuana. According to the director of the DukeLEARN neurological-research program, Dr. Wilson, a combination of all the active ingredients in marijuana “not just one, may provide the most medical benefit” (Alexander). Since Marinol has the same active ingredient, THC, as marijuana, but different other active ingredients, the drug is not exactly the same with the exact same effects. Essentially, since Marinol is legal and is very similar to marijuana then marijuana itself should be legal for medical purposes.
Lastly, by nationally legalizing medical marijuana, the federal government can tax and collect revenue...