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Why Is Marijuana Legal? The Key Reasons Explained
These unregulated remedies often included ingredients like cocaine, opium, alcohol, arsenic, and mercury, and they promised relief from numerous ailments; sometimes, they represented the only affordable how THC vape pens are changing relaxation routines option for pain relief for the typical American. Critics argue that marijuana is an intensely intoxicating substance and that its legalization promotes excessive use and risky behaviors. With the relaxation of marijuana use regulations throughout the nation, worries emerged regarding its potential dangers, benefits, usage, and oversight. In the following decades, regulations became more stringent, leading to the classification of the plant as a hazardous drug comparable to narcotics, with severe consequences imposed for possession.
Long prized not only for its medical uses, but for hemp, a fiber derived from the same plant and used to make rope, cloth, and paper in the past, marijuana was identified as a dangerous substance in the 1930s. Black Americans were arrested for cannabis offenses at roughly four times the rate of white Americans despite similar usage rates, a disparity documented in study after study. Media coverage increasingly framed cannabis as comparable to alcohol rather than to harder drugs. ScienceDirect, Cannabis effects on driving lateral control with and without alcohol, Sept. 2015 The Conversation, Drugged driving – including under the influence of cannabis and prescription drugs – is quietly becoming one of the most dangerous road hazards, Sept. 11, 2025
The CDC study aimed to understand cannabis use patterns in order to better understand related health outcomes. The study found that 10 percent of veterans aged 65 to 84 years old had used cannabis in the last 30 days and of those 36 percent had “cannabis use disorder” (CUD), an addiction to and growing tolerance of the drug, which can lead to greater use. As previously reported, prevalence of tobacco and excess alcohol use continues to be high among older adults who use cannabis.
Does this rescheduling legalize marijuana under federal law?
We know cannabis can trigger psychotic symptoms and potentially longer lasting problems with psychosis and schizophrenia. When you think about the explosion of all of the different combinations of different products and different routes of administration, it tells you how complicated it gets to study this in a rigorous way. In the big studies that have been done so far, there are some indications from animal models that cannabis might help with pain.
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During his 2020 presidential campaign, then-candidate Biden promised to “decriminalize cannabis use and automatically expunge prior convictions.” Known as the Cole Memo, this guidance was rescinded in 2018 by Jeff Sessions, attorney general under President Donald Trump. But I think as providers and professionals, everybody needs to learn more about this, because patients are going to ask no matter what. Large national studies are done every year or every other year to collect data, so we already have a pretty good sense of the prevalence of cannabis use disorder. They wouldn’t necessarily have a diagnosis yet, but maybe cannabis helps them to deal with negative symptoms, and then they develop psychosis.
Nature Genetics, Multi-ancestry genome-wide association study of cannabis use disorder yields insight into disease biology and public health implications, Nov. 20, 2023 Yale News, Genomic study links cannabis abuse to multiple health problems, Nov. 20, 2023 A study out of Europe found that drivers who tested positive for cannabis were almost twice as likely to have been responsible for a fatal collision compared to drivers without cannabis in their system.
Moreover, the recent long-term studies that have been completed are alarming. In the United Kingdom, the Misuse of Drugs Act was passed in 1971, declaring marijuana to have “no known or limited medical use.” The law now classifies marijuana as a Class B drug, which are considered less dangerous than Class A drugs including cocaine, ecstasy, and crystal meth. O’Shaughnessy reported in 1839 that cannabis was safe and used marijuana to treat rabies, cholera, delirium from alcohol withdrawal, pain, rheumatism, epilepsy, tetanus, and as a muscle relaxer. The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), the highly popular and influential treatise by English scholar Robert Burton, recommended marijuana for treating depression. The Anatomy of MelancholyFrontispiece for The Anatomy of Melancholy, by Robert Burton, published c. Part F of the CSA authorized the Shafer Commission to study rising cannabis use and make policy recommendations.
Marijuana legalization by state
A 2018 study in Social Science Research found that the main determinants of these changes in attitudes toward marijuana regulation since the 1990s were a decline in perception of the riskiness of marijuana, changes in media framing of marijuana, a decline in overall punitiveness, and a decrease in religious affiliation. In a study done by the American Civil Liberties Union, from 2001 to 2010 Black and white people use marijuana at about the same rate. In February 2019, three researchers used MedMen as a case study to illustrate their concerns with marijuana companies’ marketing practices. The bill would also allow grow sites besides the University of Mississippi, which has long been the sole supplier of cannabis for academic research, to supply cannabis for study. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “Medical marijuana refers to using the whole unprocessed marijuana plant or its basic extracts to treat a disease or symptom.” While some report symptom relief from buying cannabis online, scientific evidence on its effectiveness remains inconsistent.
Sadly, there is no turnkey solution to legalization even if the federal government legalized cannabis tomorrow. It can be folded into the alcohol and tobacco regulation, drug prescription management, or as an offshoot of their existing medical marijuana program. Most states who have legalized cannabis for recreational use regulate marijuana similarly to alcohol or cigarettes. Over this time, there has been a steep increase in the amount of marijuana use in the United States, with marijuana being the third highest type of substance abuse after tobacco and alcohol. In late March, the Senate unanimously approved the Cannabidiol and Marihuana Research Expansion Act, which would streamline the application process for researchers who want to study the medicinal value of cannabis and related products.
Some studies suggest recreational cannabis legalization may increase traffic collisions and fatalities and anxiety rates, but their credibility is limited by self-reported data and short study periods. One study found that 76% of young adults who consume cannabis reported using it to self-medicate for mental health distress, including anxiety and depression.36 Interestingly, this study also found that recreational cannabis legalization correlated with diminished use of cannabis for self-medication, differing from previous studies that noted no consistent relationship between recreational cannabis legalization and self-medication. It is hard to study, because you also don’t know if people are medicating early negative symptoms of schizophrenia. The study found that cannabis with 7.2 percent THC “reduced alcohol urge immediately after smoking. The study concluded adolescents who used cannabis prior to using other drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, were no more likely to develop a substance use disorder than subjects in the study who did not use cannabis prior to using other drugs. A study in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management by Mark Anderson and Daniel Reese indicated that increased marijuana use in California is a substitute for alcohol.