One of my previous blog posts I discussed the controversial topic of marijuana in today’s society. Many people today are either very pro marijuana or extremely against it, that is not the topic I am writing to discuss. My question is whether marijuana is bad for you or not, and if it does hurt you in what ways, and whether it is equally as harmful as alcohol. Alcohol obviously is legal in all states in our country and all around the world, unlike marijuana. We do know alcohol is harmful to the human body in many ways but marijuana is used for medical reasons and is praised by some people to be a natural substance with only healing effects. For that reason alone it makes it me wonder why it is not legal in all states throughout the United States.

Marijuana

In a study reported on http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/marijuana/behind-the-smoke-screen.html they say some very interesting things to add to the debate of whether marijuana is bad for you or not. They reported a study done based on 129 college students some being marijuana users and some not. One of the results reported were how marijuana can affect your memory and “critical skills related to attention”. This article says how marijuana can impact your memory for days or even weeks after using the drug. This seems hard to believe for me personally, I would infer that either it impacts your memory skills for a short period of time like hours or days, or permanently. The initial “high” feeling from using the drug lasts only a few hours and I would believe that the negative effects do also and if not, they last forever. In one of the experiments they had heavy marijuana users recall words from a list, and they acquired data that they did not perform well until they stopped using marijuana for up to 4 weeks. This experiment seems well set up and I do believe the results if the experiment was run correctly. In another article http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/marijuana/it-s-background.html they dicuss alcohol vs marijuana specifically. A very important statement they said is how marijuana has over 400 chemicals in it, while alcohol has one, ethanol. Now this fact may be true but it doesn’t completely and thoroughly answer the question which is worse. THC, the main chemical in marijuana, stays in your system for weeks and up to months depending on the extent of use of the drug. Ethanol in alcohol only stays in your system for hours and then is flushed out by your body. If I was to set up and experiment to try to answer these extremely difficult questions, I would combine them into one study and kill two birds with one stone. I would gather many people to have a large group of test subjects, some who are heavy marijuana user some who are alcoholics and some who don’t use either. I would test all the subjects on memory skills reaction time and things of that nature, possibly even physical fitness tests. After gathering the data you would see which group of people tend to do worse or better and see if it correlates to which group they are in, marijuana users, alcohol drinkers or neither. There is a high possibility of different variables conflicting with the results, but with a large subject group and a properly set up study you should see a correlation between groups and how they do on the tests. This experiment just like any other done would not indefinitely solve the questions but would provide solid evidence for the discussion.