- Position‹2 of 2
- No, medical marijuana should be illegal
- Argument1 of 2›
Risk for abuse or addiction
Governments should not legalize a substance which people may get addicted to.
The argument
Evidence indicates that long-term marijuana use can lead to addiction, and the argument against legalising it medically rests on how that risk is distributed rather than on its average size. Approximately 9% of those who medically use marijuana will become addicted. The number goes up to about 1 in 6 among those who use it as teenagers, and to 25 to 50% among those who use it daily. Those figures describe the two groups a medical programme is most likely to produce, since a medicine is taken on a schedule and access widens once a substance is legally available. According to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an estimated 2.7 million people 12 years of age and older met the criteria for dependence on marijuana. Dependence is also self-sustaining, which is what makes it different from a side effect that stops when the drug does. There is recognition of cannabis withdrawal syndrome, with symptoms that include irritability, sleeping difficulties, dysphoria, craving, and anxiety. Those symptoms make stopping difficult and contribute to relapse, so a patient who wishes to discontinue faces an obstacle the original condition did not present. The risk then extends beyond the drug itself. Early and regular medical marijuana use predicts an increased risk of addiction, and in turn predicts an increased risk of the use of other illicit drugs to relieve the pain if medical marijuana is unobtainable. The dependency does not disappear when supply does; it redirects. Age is the aggravating factor throughout. As compared with persons who begin to use marijuana in adulthood, those who begin in adolescence are approximately 2 to 4 times as likely to have symptoms of cannabis dependence within the 2 years after first use. For these reasons, proponents argue, the risk for abuse or addiction is grounds for keeping medical marijuana illegal.
Premises
Counter-arguments
For some users, perhaps as many as 10 per cent, cannabis leads to psychological dependence, but there is scant evidence that it carries a risk of true addiction. Unlike cigarette smokers, most users do not take the drug on a daily basis, and usually abandon it in their twenties or thirties. Unlike for nicotine, alcohol and hard drugs, there is no clearly defined withdrawal syndrome, the hallmark of true addiction, when use is stopped.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] There is no true addiction to marijuana.