Legalizing marijuana can help economy and people with their illness Research Paper

Legalizing marijuana can help economy and people with their illness like cance ,hiv, multiple sclerosis or chronic pain - Research Paper Example And, since users do not fear prosecution and are not stigmatized, they are more likely to seek treatment, which is an added bonus. Plus, criminalizing marijuana causes many problems - a drain of resources and manpower used to fight the war on the drug; the drain of not realizing tax revenue from the drug; and the loss of revenue that can be used to do research on the medicinal properties of the drug. Because of these problems, coupled with the fact that Portugal shows that our country does not need to fear that legalizing drugs will result in a substantial increase in drug use, legalization is the best idea for marijuana. The body of this paper will describe the problems with prohibition, then show the Portugal example, show the benefits of legalization, then come to a conclusion. The Controlled Substances Act has classified marijuana as a Schedule I substance, which makes it subject to the highest level of governmental control (Duncan, 2009, p. 1703). One of the reasons for this restriction is that marijuana is commonly thought of as a â€Å"gateway drug† – in other words, users of marijuana often get involved with harder drugs (Duncan, 2009, p. 1705). Other reasons are that prohibition allegedly â€Å"reduces marijuana trafficking and use, thereby discouraging crime, improving productivity and increasing health† (Miron, 2003, p. 1). Current drug policy punishes users and distributors alike. The reason why users are punished are because they ostensibly inflict harm on others; inflict harm on himself; that marijuana makes users â€Å"unproductive members of society† and that marijuana use is immoral (Blumenson & Nilsen, 2009, p. 6). According to Duncan (2009), billions of federal budgetary dollars have been committed to combatting marijuana distribution and usage, with this budget growing every year. In 2009, the budget for combatting all drugs was $14.1

Heamatology ( The effect of the environmental pollution in the Literature review

Heamatology ( The effect of the environmental pollution in the development of Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia - Literature review Example Steffen et al (2004) anticipated Belson et al’s finding about the weak link between exposure to hydrocarbons and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia among children. Their study investigated the impact of maternal occupational exposure to hydrocarbons when pregnant and leukaemia and found a weak link. According Steffen et al, residential traffic density has a significant association with child leukaemia. This manifested in the places where child leukaemia victims lived near a petrol station or a repair garage. The association suggested a causal association between exposure to benzene emitting sources and acute childhood lymphocytic leukaemia. Behren et al (2008) did not find a significant association between living in high traffic density areas and child acute lymphocytic leukaemia. They argued the resultant inconsistency between their findings on the topic and other studies’ findings could have been because of methodological differences. However, they brought in a plausible explanation to the inconsistency when they cited that different places and regions have varying traffic volumes and emission profiles. Traffic volumes and emission profiles of different places also vary with time and are therefore never stable. Behren et al also explained that the critical time for an environmental exposure to that is enough to cause the development of leukaemia in children is not known. Raaschou-Nielsen et al (2001) investigated the impact of exposure to traffic-related air pollution on the risk of developing childhood cancer. They concluded that traffic-related air pollution in residences does not cause leukaemia in children. This finding further supported the suppressed association between the two variables. However, these authors explained that their selection of cancer cases and control children from registries that were population-based could have been a source of bias in their study. They cited that there was a