Efforts to Legalize Marijuana

An argument for the legalization of marijuana is that marijuana has certain health benefits which should not be ignored. One recent case study illustrates the problem. A former member of the San Francisco Police Commission, the body that regulates the police department, Jo Daly, says that she does not want to break the law but, she needs marijuana to for medical purposes. Daly had colon cancer and had to undergo chemotherapy, which caused a burning pain under the nails of her fingers and toes, and nausea. Her relief came from marijuana, which was not legally available at the time. Daly had tried a marijuana substitute, Marinol, which has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but stated that it did not relieve her nausea. According to Daly, "if [Marinol] had worked for me, I wouldn't be doing [marijuana]" (Lacayo, 36).

The state of California, which helped start the practice of legal reform through referendum, sought to address the problem with the drafting of Proposition 215. This new law permits patients with cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, migraines, arthritis, epilepsy, and other illnesses to grow, possess and use marijuana. The proposition allows doctors to prescribe marijuana wi

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ight loss (Rist, 76). But Peron's initiative gained far more supporters, both at the polls and financially, than the movement against the proposition. Peron raised over one million dollars in support of his measure, including a gift of $350,000 from a global financier, and another $50,000 from a contributor who works with AIDS patients. According to some sources, "with deep pockets like those behind it, the fight over medical marijuana could easily go national next" (Lacayo 37). There is some support for the national legalization of marijuana in other states. For example, on November 5, 1996, the voters in Arizona also decided to allow patients to use a physician's recommendation that they smoke pot as an element of their defense if prosecuted in state marijuana cases. Moreover, a 1991 survey of conducted at Harvard Medical School showed that almost half the oncologists would prescribe marijuana for relief of the side effects from chemotherapy if it were legal to do so. And, most of those doctors surveyed admitted that they had already prescribed it to most of their patients (Baum, 6). The debate is, of course, over whether an increase in recreational use will in fact follow the acceptance of medical marijuana use. S
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2506
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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