Marijuana is known as a mild psychoactive drug, and it contains more than 400 chemicals.

The
main psychoactive substance in marijuana is THC; tetrahydrocannabinol. Marijuana has several
effects on the human body, and most on the brain. It acts primarily upon the central nervous
system where it alters brain function, resulting in temporary changes in perception, mood,
consciousness and behaviour. Studies performed at the University of Cambridge show a decrease
in consciousness; you are not as aware and awake as you would be without. The study, often
referred to as the “the Rama study”, because of scientist Ramachandrans discovery of the
Capgras syndrome, also showed some patients becoming extremely paranoid and some even
experiencing the Capgras syndrome; they believe their loved ones have been replaced by
imposters. Individuals using marijuana have some common symptoms. They often feel light-
headed, hunger, dry mouth. It has been described as “a feel-good bomb”. In a study performed in
Germany in 1987, show deficits in the user’s short time memory.

Let’s talk about memory. Memory is what makes us human. It provides our sense of identity,
allows us to recognize the people we love, and to develop skills and learn about the world.
Without memory, we’d be stuck in a Groundhog Day loop of endless re-enactment. Memory
involves all the information picked up by the ways of knowing; emotion, perception, reason and
language.
– Memory is all about recognition. If I see a Starbucks cup, I think Tazo Chai Latte’s,
Chapters, friends, fun, and so on. This is all because of memory. Remember we had those
conversations about that table and whether it really was a table or not..? That is also
based on your memory. If someone tells you, that is a table, you will remember that, and
to you, that will be a table forever. So, if marijuana messes with your memory, it should
not be legalized.
– But does it really affect your memory that much? If so, according to Canadian law, why
is it not allowed as a type of defence under intoxication when having committed a crime?
Alcohol is on the list, and we all know that if you drink too much, you might wake up the
next morning with a serious hang-over and no memory of what happened last night.
– Also, can’t loss of memory be a good thing sometimes? What if you have been through a
really tough time, e.g. been raped or something awful like that, and you experience
nightmares and paranoia? Wouldn’t marijuana be a good way to erase that memory?
So, if marijuana is legalized, we risk more and more people’s memories. And this might lead to
people causing the society to run slower, due to bad short time memory. People might not
recognize well known thing, causing issues at e.g. work, school, etc.

And that is also an argument, made by the anti-marijuana part of the population. “It slows society
down”.
– Well, let’s take a look at the stats: 64% of all Canadians have tried marijuana during their
life. Is our society running slow? No, it is not. Our society is working perfectly fine, and
if anyone is slowing society down, it is the people being put in jail for marijuana crimes.
 They have no way of getting a proper job afterwards, and that might lead to new crimes
being committed due to lack of opportunities.
– But we got to take some factors into consideration;
#1) not all of the people who have tried marijuana are still using it daily, meaning
the stats are manipulated to favour the pro side, because they are not mentioning
this...
#2) if not put in jail/ punished for something that actually is illegal, how is the
society gonna work? There would be people committing crimes everywhere,
because they would know they could use the marijuana and getting out of the
punishment.

This leads to a new issue; the un-controlled production of marijuana. By not legalizing it the U.S.
government loses almost 14 billion dollars in tax every year if marijuana was to be taxed the
same way as alcohol. This money could have been used to catch the people who are illegally
importing marijuana. Also, if the growing is controlled, the government would know what
amount of THC that is in the marijuana, and they would not have to worry about too high
concentrations leading to e.g. extremely bad judgement, etc.
But, even though they would be able to control it, there would still be illegal substances, and the
illegal substances would be harder to find because it is legalized, so they cannot be punished for
having it/using it. This will also make the detection of other drugs harder, as a lot of drug tests
test for several kind of drugs, especially marijuana, since it is so common, this means you can
easily blame using marijuana if you e.g. really were doing cocaine. Even though the substances
are different, they will both appear on the same test, and the only way of finding out if it is
marijuana or not is a blood test. And this is gonna cost A LOT of money to do blood tests on all
suspects. So, the taxes and the costs to provide proper testing will probably even out.

Let’s talk about the some of the controversial science behind marijuana use...

Science is biased information. No matter what you do, some science will always be biased. A
scientist would not spend years researching something he/she thought to be impossible. They are
trying to prove something by researching it. This means that every little sign of evidence
supporting their thesis will be well documented, and made a bigger fuss about than if something
disproving the thesis was to happen. This does not go for all scientists, but it is very common.
Another example of a knowledge problem is misinterpretations of the science. If read that
“smoking marijuana gives you cancer”, I would assume it was the marijuana causing the cancer,
not the smoking, which is really the truth. This is another way of portraying marijuana as a bad
thing. So, let me give you another example...

Who here, in this room, has ever heard the saying “marijuana kills brain cells”? This was the #1
argument for marijuana prohibition in the early 70’s. Ronald Reagan, the president of the United
States at this time, made scientists perform an experiment involving monkeys smoking weed.
The moneys, who were between 10-12 kg, were pumped full of marijuana – about 30 joints a day
– for 30 days, and the result was that most of the monkeys died after 90 days. After a few weeks
only, it was revealed that the real experiment involved pumping at least 83 joints filled with the
strongest Colombian marijuana they could find. And since they used a machine (a pump) to do
this, the monkeys were suffocated. They didn’t die from an overdose of marijuana; they died
from lack of oxygen. And after their death, when they compared the brain cells of the non-users
to the users, of course; they found that the users had less brain cells. And the reason why?
Because they died from lack of oxygen, and guess what? Lack of oxygen kills brain cells.

So why is it that people still believe in this statement? Because we made it knowledge by making
it a justified true belief; the government justified it by their brain cell count, and we believed it.

Altogether, science didn’t lie; the politicians did. And that brings us over to a new area of
knowing; HUMAN SCIENCES.

So, why are these politicians so against marijuana legalization? In the movie, the union, the
mayor of Vancouver said “prohibition has never worked”, but is he right? In 1957, the year
before it became prohibited, it estimated that there were 50 000 marijuana users. Now, in year
2009, the estimate number is 50 million users. But there are some issues to this information...
#1) can we trust this estimation? It is performed by computers, artificial intelligence, and based
only on the amount of marijuana produced on an international level. What about the amount
being destroyed?
#2) the population grew, so really, the percentage growth is not the same, so the legalization
organizations are also manipulating the information to their advantage.

Another argument against marijuana legalization is that there are more kids in clinics for
marijuana addiction than any other substance (since cigarette-addiction does not count...). This is
because the DEA and the judges in cases concerning marijuana, offers either “treatment of
marijuana addiction” or jail. Even though you don’t show any sign of use, and if the tests were
negative, this would still be the offer. No wonder the numbers are so high then... but then again,
almost 20% of them are in there for serious addiction. This is strange, because marijuana
contains no substances that encourage physical addiction. This means the addiction is purely
psychological, which can be solved by being treated with... marijuana. So is this an evil circle of
drug abuse? Should psychological issues be solved by the use of mind altering drugs? What
about our consciousness? Will we be awake and aware enough to be able to make the same
decisions as before? Probably not... and this might lead to accidents, e.g if driving high.

Talking about this brings us over to another argument; marijuana and driving. If your
consciousness is affected, then should you be driving? No. But that does not seem to stop certain
people. In fact, in Western Europe, almost 1.5% of all car accidents are due to the driver being
under the impact of marijuana. What about the rest of the cases concerning impaired driving?
40.8% is due to alcohol.
– So how come alcohol is legal and marijuana is not? The argument was “marijuana is
easier to abuse”. Well, let’s talk about abuse. If I jump of a bridge, should bridges be
prohibited? I did abuse it. Or if I decide to poke my eye with a fork, should forks be
banned? If I eat too much cheese burgers, should they be made illegal? NO! This is not a
good argument, guys...
– So let’s compare marijuana to some legal substances. Alcohol kills 40 000 Americans a
year. Cigarettes kills 440 000 Americans per year. Guess what..? That is more than all the
deaths caused by AIDS, heroin, car accidents, crack, alcohol, fire, murders and cocaine
TOGETHER! Marijuana has never caused a death. To die from marijuana you must
smoke 30 regular sized joints in less than 20 minutes. Yeah right, I challenge you! And
 this leads to another important fact; you can die from an overdose of almost everything!
Coffee, candy, fats and so on. Are they banned for that reason?
– But then again, coffee, candy and fats are not mind altering drugs, are they? Well, sugar
and fats stimulate parts of the brain usually not stimulated, leading to an increased release
of endorphins: what makes you happy. They do actually alter your mind.

A last issue would be the stereotyping of people. If using reason as a way of knowing, which of
these two people are most likely to be a marijuana user? *show power point slide*
Pretty easy, right? Your mind tells you that the old lady would never do such a thing, but the
punk would. This is due to recognition. You recognise and deduce. It goes like this; old ladies are
sweet. Sweet people do not do illegal drugs like marijuana. Old ladies do not do marijuana.
Deductive reasoning. So, what if I show you these pictures? *show next slide* Here it’s
opposite; sweet young boy, and gangster granma. Who decides what a good person looks like?
The majority? The Government? Stereotyping people can even ruin lives. E.g. if you’ve been in
jail for e.g. marijuana possession, everyone who knows about this will always see you as a
druggie, as a useless dealer. It will be hard to get a job, to get established, etc. due to this box
you’ve been placed in.

I do believe my information is also biased because of all the information I have collected the past
days. I have watched two pro-marijuana legalization movies, pretty much convincing me that
legalization is the only right thing to do. So I am definitively not saying my presentation is the
best example of a neutral discussion. There are still lots of side effects that might occur if using
marijuana. Among them: Impaired judgment and motor coordination, Shortened attention span
and distractibility, Anxiety and panic attacks, increased heart rate, Increased risk of heart attack,
Increased risk for schizophrenia in vulnerable individuals, Impaired judgment, problems with
memory and learning, Lowered motivation , Decreased alertness and coordination , Addiction
and last but not at least the withdrawal symptoms from stopping drug use (in a chronic user):
irritability, sleeplessness, anxiety, impaired appetite, and aggression.
The reason why I have not talked about these symptoms are because they are too individual.
They have not been researched enough upon, and the information available is limited.

To conclude, I would say that in general, marijuana is not good for you, but neither is alcohol
and cigarettes, so I believe it is – especially – not fear for the people in medical need of
marijuana to not be able to use it, when alcoholics can abuse alcohol as much as they want, and
smokers can smoke 10 packs a day if they want. But, on the other hand, the government got to
draw the line somewhere. If marijuana is legalized, what is next? Cocaine? Heroin?
So, if it’s not gonna be legalized, don’t lie about the facts just to scare people. And if it is gonna
be legalized, make sure to put restrictions like age limit, limited amounts, etc on it, so it is not
being abused the same way cigarettes and alcohol is. Think about it; does a dealer ask for ID?
No. If it was legalized and controlled, ID would be required, and fewer people would get a hold
of it. But then again; does people under age drink? Yes. Marijuana has also been said to be a
gate-away drug, something that is not scientifically proven, but it is realistic that the dealer you
are buying marijuana of also possesses other drugs. This will lead to use of other drugs, which is
definitively dangerous. And I would also say that it is very hard to find objective information, as
the definition of objective is “information that is mind-independent” and most information has
been processed by a mind before being published, leading to biased information.

There is so much more to be said about this topic, about why on 4:20 or weed-day the police
does nothing about the people smoking marijuana, about who will be affected by a legalization,
and how “the union” – meaning the whole marijuana network – works. But I’m out of time... I
would definitively recommend that you take a look at the movie the union, either you are against
or for a legalization; it really makes some good points.