Pros And Cons Of Smoking Weed
Marijuana is a criminalized drug that is illegal in many countries all over the world, but it is also known in the medical community to be a drug that can have many health benefits. How are you supposed to know what to believe when it comes to this classically groovy drug? For some, marijuana is as gentle as having an after work beer, and for others it is a gateway drug down a very bad habit hole. What is the truth? Is smoking weed bad for your health? Or is marijuana just another plant produced by nature for you to enjoy in a natural herbal and medicinal way? Here are the the pros and cons of smoking weed.
Medical Professionals
The best way for you to understand what the pros and cons of smoking weed are, is to consult a professional physician. But even the professionals are torn when it comes to the health benefits of weed. While as a drug, the medical community has come up with many health benefits for cannabis, they can not hide the fact that there are some dangers of smoking weed.
Pros: Doctors have found there is much promising research that the use of marijuana could impact huge amounts of patients, both children and adults, who suffer from serious illnesses like cancer, epilepsy and Alzheimers. Just by helping to aid the pain alone from chronic illness, in a gentle and natural way. The good things about weed is that is lowers the demand for narcotics which causes the greatest number of accidental deaths a year with overdoses. So for many in the medical community, the marijuana health risks are mostly positive and so smoking weed should be viewed as a medical necessity.
Cons: The medical community has structured and engineered safe and effective prescription drugs that specifically take care of individual medical needs. Because there is no such thing as medical marijuana, the dangers of smoking weed are the same as using any other illegal drug. These negative side affects are well known by the medical community and should not be ignored, they include: apathy, loss in productivity, addictive natures, loss of intellectual function and motor skills, and psychosis. Why would the medical community begin to prescribe a drug, marijuana, with so many health risks, when there are alternatives that do not affect quality of life.
Health Risks
If the doctors are torn when is comes to understanding the pros and cons of weed. It is then important to discover what the health benefits are when it comes to the dangers and good thing about smoking weed. If we understand what weed does to our body, we can get a better sense of the health risks and benefits of this drug.
Pros: There is very little evidence that smoking weed has any health risks to anyone. There are no known deaths from overdoses and there have been no cases in which smoking weed has caused cancer, emphysema or any other dangerous and serious medical condition. Smoking weed has been known to cure common uncomfortable ailments such as Glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, Lupus and Crohn’s disease. Marijuana is also an extremely safe and effective way to treat PTSD, a disorder that many people, especially veterans suffer from. And weed helps reduce nausea in patients undergoing chemotherapy, which means that these patients are able to eat normally and have better health and ability to fight off this deadly disease. Many people argue that living in a city and breathing the normal air around you, has worse health issues associated with it than smoking marijuana does to your body.
Cons: At the basis of marijuana use, it is smoking something. And just like tobacco smoke, it is an irritant and smoking anything can have negative affects on your health. The dangers of smoking weed are similar to those that are smoking tobacco. Weed can contain toxins and harmful particles that can damage lungs and caused inflamed airways, increased airway resistance, and lung hyperinflation. People who are reported regular marijuana users have reported more symptoms of chronic bronchitis, and as a whole, use more sick days than non-smokers. With this information, do the pros and cons of weed have a large impact on health? There seems to be two sides to every story.
Marijuana And Pain
One of the most basic uses in the medical community for marijuana is its ability to ease pain in a very natural, gentle and effective way. For many people this is the key to a healthy quality of life that they need in order to function normally in society. For others, it is just an excuse for people to walk around high all day and, while their pain has somewhat subsided, their high does not allow them to perform their jobs properly, or drive a car safely.
Pros: There is much research into the area of using marijuana as a natural pain killer. Because there is no none lethal dose, users can smoke as much as necessary to deal with the pain without doing harm internally. Cannabis is also easily dosed and comes in many forms, like vapor or creams and does not have to be smoked to get the natural benefits from smoking weed for pain relief. Avoiding using opioids for pain can be a huge life saver as opioid addiction is the leading cause of death in the United States. Natural cannabis contains on 5 – 15% THC and has many other therapeutic cannabinoids which work with your body to produce a pain-free analgesia.
Cons: The harmful effects of weed, in some research, outweighs any benefits to smoking weed to chronic pain. There is no real evidence in research that shows that smoking weed has a natural analgesic affect on the bodies pain threshold. Instead, studies show that weed only temporarily produces a short term central nervous system euphoria which can feel like pain relief, but is not the same as taking appropriate prescription drugs and is instead associated with addictive drug use. There are many other analgesic medications which have been created, tested and gone through trial by the medical community specifically for the ease of chronic pain, that are more controlled than using marijuana for pain relief.
Addictiveness Of Smoking Weed
One of the most important factors when determining if a drug is a good drug or a bad drug, is the quality of its addictiveness. There are many illegal drugs that are highly addictive and dangerous to your health, but there are also many prescription drugs that do the same thing, is smoking weed going to have the same addictive nature as these bad drugs? Or is smoking weed good for you?
Pros: It has only been found that less than 10% of marijuana users develop a psychological dependency to smoking weed. There is very little evidence that marijuana ever leads to true addiction. Because unlike cigarettes, most people do not use the drug everyday or habitually in their life, and most people abandon the drug altogether in their twenties and thirties. Also, Marijuana has no evidence of withdrawal symptoms or dangers, which is the greatest sign that a substance is addictive.
Cons: The earlier that a person starts to smoke marijuana, the more likely they are to develop a dependency on the drug. Studies show that people who start smoking in their teens are more likely to smoke on a daily basis and feel the need to smoke to get through their day. Also habitual weed smokers have reported feeling withdrawal like symptoms of anxiety, restlessness, dysphoria and cravings, when not smoking for an extended period of time.
Alternative To Smoking Weed
People love to smoke weed because it is a natural drug, a plant, that can help with many chronic symptoms. But marijuana is still a drug and there are some healthier alternatives that people can take that will improve their daily life. Instead of smoking weed, go for a run to reach a natural high and also keep your body in good shape. Practice meditation to keep your mind clear and your cognitive abilities sharp, or practice yoga to reduce chronic pain and anxiety. If you want to still use the effects of weed without getting high, try CBD oil, which is derived from cannabis, but has no THC or illegal properties in it at all, only the health and pain benefits from taking that drug.
While there are many professionals who feel very strongly on either side of the argument on whether smoking weed is good or bad for you, there is one thing that we know for sure; any sort of healthy alternative that does not include getting high, by marijuana or prescription drugs, is the safest option. But if there is a illness whose chronic symptoms impose on the healthy and happy quality of life of a person, and smoking weed is a safe and natural way to deal with that, many professionals are happy to prescribe mother natures pain relieving plant.
