Benefits of Marijuana: Weed Legalization Petition Spread? White House Opposes

By Staff Writer

Apr 21, 2015 09:04 AM EDT

Petitions for weed legalization have spread not only in number but also in scope. From medical marijuana, another petition covering the full legalization of recreational marijuana has been filed in Massachusetts via ballot initiative. 

Bay State Repeal, a leading marijuana legalization advocacy in Massachusetts, submitted on Friday its draft to the state Attorney General for an informal legal review.

The first draft advocates for the "lawful sale, possession and use of recreational pot". The draft specifically focuses on removing the prohibition of marijuana access to adults while restricting access to minors. 

Benefits of marijuana include anxiety and pain treatment. It could also help people with stymie opioid addiction. Burlington-based doctor Thor Agustsson claimed in an interview which appears first on WBUR that marijuana can help reduce addiction to opiates (or other addictive substances like alcohol and cocaine) when used properly, such as through a harm-reduction medicine. According to the physician, there have been studies that showed the benefits of cannabis (marijuana) in helping people with addiction problems reduce their substance intakes.

The state's Attorney General and the White House both welcomed initiatives like this to give it the chance to review "draft petitions on an informal, non-binding basis". The White House likewise shared its interest in the potential of marijuana thus its support in "ongoing research into determining what components of the marijuana plant can be used as medicine".

The White House, however, emphasized that it develops policies based on science and research. To date "neither the FDA nor the Institute of Medicine have found smoked marijuana to meet the modern standard for safe or effective medicine for any condition." This, coupled with the recorded health risks that come with marijuana use - addiction, cognitive impairment, and respiratory disease, not to mention the increasing number of emergency visits and voluntary admissions to rehab facilities due to marijuana, suggests that it is not a benign drug. 

The above mentioned information were all quoted in the response of the President, through the President's National Drug Control Strategy, to a petition to remove marijuana from the Schedule 1 list of drugs in the controlled substances Act and 7 other related petitions.

In spite of this, petitions for weed legalization have been spreading fast across US states and beyond. With apparent benefits of marijuana, and pro-marijuana advocates like MassCann/NORML holding events to call for the legalization of marijuana use, similar activities and intitiatives are likely to arise throughout the US states this year. 

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