Monday, February 8, 2010

Carol AlvarezEnglish 122B. Kern28 January 2010 Legalizing Marijuana The New York Times.com “New Jersey Vote Backs Marijuana for Severely Ill “11 Jan. 2010 David Kocieniwski, reports, New Jersey legislator approves a measure to legalize medical marijuana. The measure he states would allow patients with severe illnesses to acquire a prescription for marijuana grown and distributed through state monitored dispensaries. Within nine months patients would be able to fill these prescriptions at one of six locations. Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, a democrat who sponsored the legislation, said “New Jersey would be the most restrictive medical marijuana la in the nation because it would permit doctors to prescribe it for only a set list of serious, chronic illnesses ‘(Kocieniwski) There is so much controversy that arises regarding the growing of this medical marijuana, the distribution and who legitimally needs it. Many opposers believe that far too many doctors will start prescribing and over prescribing to patients just like they do now with narcotic pain medicine. Some believe that by legalizing it that it will increase the number of children who start using it. Keiko Warner, a school counselor in Millville, N.J. states that “students already faced intense pressure to experiment with marijuana, and that the use of medical marijuana would only increase the likelihood that teenagers would experiment with the drug.” (Kocieniwski) Personally I feel that is ridiculous, marijuana is already out there and people who are using it or want to use it, will get it whether it is legalized or not . One of my favorite articles was written by Edward Forchion, also known as New Jersey Weedman. “NJweedman.com” Mr. Forchion currently resides in California where he grows and distributes marijuana to over 1000 people per week. He raises the ability of the government to properly grow effective marijuana as he states, “Anyone familiar with the marijuana plant knows that there are varying degrees of potency, particular strains that prove more effective than others on particular ailments, and that each person’s individual tolerance is unique” (Edward Forchion) My summation from his article is that New Jersey should allow people such as himself to grow the marijuana for them, as they are the experts.Marijuana has shown to be an effective substance for treating patients who suffer from debilitating illnesses. One can only hope that the legislators come to some sort of agreement that will benefit those that truly need it. My vote would be yes.

2 comments:

Yes and Yes. Legalization for medicinal purposes is such a smart idea. The narcotics that doctors prescribe now happen to have terrible and permanent sidefects. Marijuana however has very little sidefects, in fact most of the comonly known sidefects only come into play when the user smokes a large amount of marijuana in a very short period of time. In the Nixon administration the tests that they performed on primeapes where unfair, they would literaly fill a room with smoke and put the chimps inside for about 30 minutes, something that your everyday pothead couldn't even afford. So here is a new openminded administration, hopefully they do what they can to give the people who suffer from illness a relaxing natural drug.

I agree as well with both of the statements above. I especially agree with the use of marijuana over other narcotics. The sideffects of narcatics can be permanent. Indeed, marijuana grows naturally and therefore has few sideffects. If it is proven that marijuana can help treat a patient in an affective way then I back it one-hundred percent.

About this blog:

This blog is an ongoing discussion among members of two sections of Brookdale Community College's English 122 class, taking place in Spring 2010. This class teaches critical thinking and research writing skills, using the news stories of the day as a starting point for investigations. This blog seeks to encourage conversation about important cultural events and developments among community college students.

What each member contributes

Each class member is required to create a new post every week. This post will contain: a link to the new article (or several links, if the student is interested in seeing how the story has been handled by different news outlets), a 3-5 sentence summary of the story, and a paragraph response to the story. This paragraph should identify a controversy raised by the story. If there is no controversy, choose a different article. After identifying the controversy, one might imagine the repercussions of supporting one side over the other, connect the article's contents with other unfolding new stories, or express a viewpoint or opinion about it. These paragraphs should always use a quotation from the argument to help create a strong dialog between the author of the article and the author of the blog posting.

Each class member is also required to comment on another student's post once a week.

All posts are "labeled" with the writer's name so that each student's work can be followed in the label index.