Who is the Government to say what people can and cannot do to ease their pain and suffering from medical problems? The debate over whether the federal government should legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes has been a major topic for many years now. Marijuana along with other alternative drugs can ease ones medicinal problems. At this point there is no proof the supports the idea that marijuana actually does help pain, since it is labeled as a schedule one drug, research would be illegal. If marijuana were legalized for medicinal purposes there could be a lot more fraud problems with people thinking they need it or just making the doctors believe they need it, doctors are supposed to be able to handle these situations professionally and we trust them to do that. This issue may never go anywhere, there may not be a right answer but it should at least be looked at, very carefully.
There are many drugs on the market that are completely legal that will ease patients" pain and suffering. Marinol is a synthetic form of marijuana that contains one of the main ingredients of marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol, it is sold as an appetite stimulant and an anti-nausea drug (Rogers). Many patients are given Codine, Percoset, Percodan, and many other pain killers to ease their pain (Turner). There are many alternative drugs that may even do a better job to ease a patients pain. Marijuana is only one of the many painkillers, there are many more that are legal with a doctors prescription.
Although there are many other painkillers that are legal, the users or the people who need marijuana say that none of the other drugs help as much or they give them a false sense of their own strengths and weaknesses. Many of the other painkillers make people feel like junkies and they go through withdrawal symptoms. Marijuana has 460 different chemicals in it which make it very hard to make an alternative that does exactly the same thing, or even close (Rogers).