Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. The demand for appropriate medication is increasing.

With
that, we, the government, is proud to support the use of medical marijuana as a medical option.
This house would like to propose that medical marijuana is really about regulation and that its
legalization does not affect the current situation of recreational drugs in terms of increasing the rate
of use(it decreases).The cannabis plant contains a number of cannabinoids, which are chemical
compounds that acts on cannabinoid receptors in cells, and two of which are given more interest.
These are THC and CBD and in fact, the United States has already derived medical sprays from
these cannabinoids. Namely, Sativex, Marinol and many other more. Looking into our body in a
biological manner, our body is actually equipped with cannabinoid receptors and these receptors
are actually very crucial in human development as it is through these receptors that newborns
learn how to suck, it is through the activation of these receptors that babies feel the urge to eat.
This is triggered by the cannabinoids found in breast milk. In addition when our endocannabinoid
system is activated, they protect cells against viruses, harmful bacteria, cancer and other
malignancies. Although medical marijuana has the potential to be the next breakthrough in the
pharmaceuticals, this house still believes that constant regulation and check on the purity of the
substance is important. As with the implementation of a selective-use to differentiate those that are
in dire need of medical marijuana and not. With selective-use, I am referring to a semi-permissible
system which classifies patients who are qualified to medical marijuana use or not. It doesn't mean
that when you are ill, and that you feel that marijuana can help relieve and satiate the pain or
symptoms that you are ratified to the compassionate use of medical marijuana. All of these of
course will still depend on the qualifications and also the prescriptions of a physician or a medical
expert on cannabis use. Again, I would like to stress that although there are some side effects of
marijuana, these effects are very mild as compared to other drugs that are both legal and illegal.
Medical cannabis has reached a stage of no return, we have already started to benefit from it
centuries back and that it is really important now to distinguish whether marijuana's alleged
detrimental effects is really uncontrollable and how do these negative effects compare with the
effects of our current medical drugs, and also other products in the market. I would like to give 2
arguments supporting our stance on the usage of medical marijuana. First and foremost I would
like to talk on the matter of misinformation. Marijuana have long been referred to as the go-to drug
for teens and also probably one of the most popular rave drugs. It has been considered as
addictive and such. But as to marijuana is really addictive is still a much debated topic. Although a
statistical research have shown that the dependence on cannabis has an estimated prevalence
value of 9. Or to simply put it, about 9% who use cannabis becomes dependent on it. The 9%
value is also much debated whether this is a large number in terms of the dependence rate but is
no where near the border line of being considered dependent in alcoholic terms. The study I
mentioned earlier shows that alcohol has a prevalence value of 32 which is threefold's that of the
cannabis. In addition, addiction refers to behaviors that are compulsive and partially out of control
or even worse. Therefore, those who take marijuana medications for health reasons are not
addicted despite the fact that they are physiologically dependent on these unless he or she is also
physically dependent on the drug or if that drug interferes with his or her life, they do not meet the
clinical definition of addiction. And using the word addictive on marijuana is very misleading
especially to those vulnerable to this kind of misinformation, which are the hearsay community that
contributes to illogical activism. Another sub-point which is also the infamous excuse that they put
out during arguments is that legalizing or supporting marijuana sends a wrong message to the
community, especially to the youth. In fact, several recent and past studies have shown that
despite the legalization of marijuana, the rates of use of marijuana actually declined which is part of
a nation-wide trend in the United States. A more interesting shift of trend is during the legalization
of marijuana in the state of California back in 1996. From the year 1990 to 1996, according to The
Providence Journal written by Jocelyn Elders, MD, teen marijuana use has rose steadily. But
immediately after the legalization of marijuana, this trend stopped and began to fall. The Drug Free
America Foundation also stated in their 2005 report that no state with medical marijuana law has
experienced an increase in youth marijuana use since the law's enactment. To give a more recent
data, an article entitled Medical marijuana laws and adolescent marijuana use in the USA from
1991 to 2014 made by Hasin et al will only more support that marijuana legalization does not
directly affect the rates of use as the article also stated that the use of marijuana in adolescents
have not increased in the states that passed the medical marijuana law(8th graders). Very briefly,
my second argument would like to talk on the effects of not supporting medical marijuana. One
effect that this would have is that studies conducted focusing on medical marijuana will be less in
number as no one would spend his time doing a research of something that is not bound to be
legalized anyway. Although there might still be a few passionate researchers, what I am referring
here are the big fishes, like the multi-million drug companies who would invest generously in these
medical researches. We already have a glimpse of the medical benefits of marijuana and not
giving attention to this fact and being delusional is in a way a violation of our right to health. Others
argue that there are alternatives to marijuana. But I would like to point out that there are a lot of
factors to consider before you could strongly suggest that this certain drug is a perfect alternative
for marijuana. Such factors could be one's income, belief, side effects and also how one responds
to the treatment as every body is unique. When you take all of these factors into consideration,
there are times that we need to admit that marijuana is the only choice for the situation. In addition,
not all of these alleged and supposed alternatives are safe. Certain types of antibiotics have
caused nausea..... While morphine is considered to be more dangerous and more addictive than
marijuana. Lastly, anesthesia which is commonly used for surgeries could cause respiratory
depression. We must clearly agree that even the drugs that are legally approved nowadays carry
certain side effects, but it is on the regulation and way of use that they are controlled. To wrap it up,
while medical cannabis is still one of the most debated topics and is also still subject to criticism
following the numerous researches exposing the detriments of marijuana, we must consider that
95% of the researches made are vindicating these detrimental effects of marijuana leaving us only
5% of the researches made focused on studying the beneficial effects of medical marijuana. But
even with only having a small percentage of studies focusing on the benefits of marijuana, out of
60 peer-reviewed studies involving cannabis and cannabis extracts, 41 of them falls under the pros
category which is 68.3% of the total studies while 14 representing 23.3% of the total are still
unclear whether they are a pro or a con. Leaving us only 5 or 8.3% of the total studies classifying
the use of medical marijuana as a con. 1 is on cancer, 1 is on AIDS and 3 on Multiple Sclerosis.
Cancer is still blurry on the marijuana research while AIDS and Multiple Sclerosis are different as
the studies showing marijuana option as a con is outnumbered by the studies showing that medical
cannabis is a pro. 5 studies show AIDS is beneficial while 11 studies were classifying medical
marijuana use for Multiple Sclerosis a pro. As what I have said earlier, medical marijuana is about
regulation and it is a fact that every drug has symptoms, every drug possesses side effects. But
clearly the benefits of medical marijuana as shown by this study clearly outweigh the possible
detriments of medical marijuana in a statistical manner. Thank you.