Marijuana Should Not Be Legalized

As the saying goes, "there"s two sides to every story". In this world of 24-hour news channels, those with the loudest voices and most polarizing positions seem to get the most recognition regardless of whether or not they have their facts straight. And like sheep following the shepherd, people buy into the opinion because they"re too lazy to read up on the issue themselves. In the interest of fairness, and to educate myself on the issue, I did some research on why weed should stay illegal. As I said repeatedly in the reasons weed should be legalized, I"ve never taken a single puff off a joint, pipe, bong, bowl, or any other contraption, so I have no dog in this fight. I also can"t say that if the day comes where marijuana is treated the same way alcohol is that it will sway me to give it a shot. My goal with both of these lists is to provide both sides of the argument so that you may be able to make an informed judgement for yourself and maybe learn something about the opposite side of the story if you happen to lean one way or the other. Let"s get started" This may not be a deterrent for some. Actually, if you have absolutely no desire to have children, this fact may even drive you toward smoking pot. Let"s say for argument sake, you do plan on starting a family some day. A WebMD report from 2003 on a study conducted by the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences says that marijuana makes a man"s "swimmers" super-hyper causing them to prematurely enter into what is called "hyperactivation". Generally, this part of the fertilization process doesn"t begin until sperm detect a woman"s egg. By starting the process early, the boys are exhausted well before that point and end up dying off. A guy I went to high school with was a heavy pot smoker. One of those guys who used any amount of spare time to blaze up. As the years went on, you could see the toll it had taken on his brain. He was "burnt". Even when he wasn"t high as a kite, he spoke slowly, and had that stereotypical stoner-drawl to his speech. His eyelids were droopy like comedian and Saturday Night Live alum, Jim Breuer, and he just became very sloth-like. Within minutes of taking the first drag, THC enters the bloodstream and gets to work on a part of the brain called the hippocampus, the area responsible for memory function. Citing research from McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, the ODEA says that regular users of marijuana "had impaired skills related to attention, memory and learning for up to 24 hours after they last used the drug. These students had difficulty in sustaining and shifting attention and in registering, organizing and using information than the control group." Basically, if a goal in your life is to make it on Jeopardy!, don"t smoke the dope. A great number of studies have been conducted in an attempt to correlate the use of pot and the onset of schizophrenia. The results have been mixed, however one common thread seems to be the age at which people start using marijuana and a family history of mental illness. The thought being that early use alters the development of brain receptors, known as endocannabinoid receptors, which control the brain"s dopamine systems. It"s believed that changing the way endocannabinoids influence dopamine during development could result in a chronically high level of dopamine in some regions of the brain, which may increase the likelihood of psychotic episodes. Studies show that chemicals in marijuana cause the body to kick its production of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC"s) into overdrive. Like the United Nations of the human body, the job of these cells are to keep the rest of the immune system in check. They make sure that just enough force is used to fight off infection, but not too much. An increased amount of MDSC"s basically causes them to abuse their power so to speak and suppress the immune system to the point where it can"t effectively fight off infections. Kind of like bringing a knife to a gun fight. Researchers and scientists have had a difficult time finding a direct correlation between smoking weed and lung cancer. The reason being they have a hard time finding people who have smoked marijuana and marijuana only. Generally, weed smokers also tend to indulge in tobacco which is proven to be a leading cause of lung cancer. What scientists have been able to nail down is the similarities in tobacco smoke and marijuana smoke, and the results are surprising. A slightly more recent study in 2009 showed that since marijuana users typically tend to take longer drags and hold the smoke in for an extended period of time before exhaling, smoking 3-4 joints a day is equal to "the same degree of damage to bronchial mucus membranes as 20 or more tobacco cigarettes a day." Yikes!