8/6/16 at 12:03 AM 0 Comments

Medicinal Value of Cannabis Sativa: Is it significant?

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Cannabis is a drug globally popular and used in many parts of the world. It has acquired different names based on the part of the world it is being used. These names include Weed, Hashish, Pot, and Marijuana. According to Shan (2008), the drug has been banned in many parts of the world, and for a good reason. The adverse effects of the use of the drug on the societies are intolerable. However, there is some medicinal value of the plant that produces the drug, and this is the focus of this paper. The paper wants to establish if the medicinal value of Cannabis can be enough to offset the negative effects.

Positive effects
The main medicinal benefits of the plant include being used as stress, depression and anxiety reliever, aids in digestion problems such as lack of appetite, heart diseases such as blood pressure and also treats insomnia. These are solutions to challenges that affect a significant number of people in the society. Most importantly, heart diseases such as blood pressure have been established to be positively influenced by the use of cannabis. This is a great benefit to many people suffering from such conditions seeing that the heart is a very sensitive organ. What the drug does is to balance out the cardiac functions and also reducing oil lipids to prevent high blood pressure. Clearly, the drug is very active in this area. Some drugs can achieve the same result, but the drug has been found to be more efficient regarding cost and time. As a result, the drug has a very strong hand of benefit in the medical world (Lanz et al., 2016).

Adverse effects
On the other hand, the drug has very intense adverse effects that have led to its prohibition. Numerically, these adverse effects outnumber the benefits. They include hallucination, increased heart palpitations, loss of concentration and memory, complete detachment from the current moment, impaired reflexes, weakening of the immune system and reduced motivation and ambition. These are solemn adverse effects that can lead to very antisocial lifestyles in victims and even death. Particularly, hallucination weakening of the immune systems is most notable in the list. These effects can lead easily to death of the victim or those around the victim. However, the main reason as to why many states probity the drug is because it can easily lead to chaos when abused. This is because it is hard to control persons under the influence of the drug. States may fear that their citizens may end up losing control, and their civility and chaos created; that is one of the reasons it is advised to include cannabis random drug tests for workplace safety. Medical institutions support the ban because the drug reduces the immune system exposing individuals to all manner of illnesses that can easily end their lives (Hazekamp & Heerdink, 2013). From this list, it is clear that Cannabis has more adverse effects than benefits.

From the active and adverse effects provided above, it is clear that Cannabis has more adverse effects than positive. However, the purpose was to assess the weight of the positives against the weight of the negatives. Weight in this context will refer to the tendency to lead to death or save a life. IN this regard, weak immune system and hallucination will result in the death of the victim or that of the people around them and therefore this makes the drug very deadly. On the other hand, the drug when used well can be used to save lives of patients affected by heart diseases. This is a very high point because several lives can be saved which is very essential to the entire medical institutions. Comparing the two sides, saving the lives of the patient's heart problem is still low when compared to the death of victims due to weakened immune systems and hallucinations. After all, the patient treated with the plant with heart problems may end up with a weakened immune system. Therefore, the verdict is that Cannabis Sativa cannot be relied upon to be used as a medicinal drug extensively due to the negative side effects associated with the drug. Banning the drug is the only logical and rational thing to do all over the world. Stricter measures should, however, be instituted to limit its illegal use.

Hazekamp, A., & Heerdink, E. (2013). The prevalence and incidence of medicinal cannabis on prescription in The Netherlands. European Journal Of Clinical Pharmacology, 69(8), 1575-1580.
Lanz, C., Mattsson, J., Soydaner, U., & Brenneisen, R. (2016). Medicinal Cannabis: In Vitro Validation of Vaporizers for the Smoke-Free Inhalation of Cannabis. Plos ONE, 11(1), 1-18.
Shan, Y. (2008, July). Cannabis -- friend or foe?. Mental Health Practice. p. 11.
