When people think of marijuana use, they are often thinking of the type you see in movies and pop culture. The stereotypical ‘sneaky drug deals’ going down on dark street corners in dangerous parts of town. Or, perhaps, the hazy apartment filled with teenagers too stoned to move, having the door broken down by cops. In reality, a large part of marijuana legalization in the United States so far has been medically influenced. Over half of the states in the country, and Washington, D.C., have now legalized the use of medical marijuana. California was the first to do so in 1996, and just recently legalized the use of recreational marijuana. The health benefits of marijuana are numerous, and many patients have seen drastically improved quality of life since the legalization of medical marijuana. One of the main groups of patients aided by medical marijuana? Cancer patients. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the United States, with 591,699 recorded deaths. Marijuana helps cancer patients resume a healthy diet, as nausea and vomiting are both side effects of chemotherapy treatments. A study performed at the National Institute of Health showed increased food intakes among cancer patients receiving marijuana treatment, and that 20 of the 25 surveyed patients preferred marijuana to other antiemetic (anti-nausea) drugs.

My sophomore year in high school, a junior at our school was diagnosed with leukemia. She is the only person in my life that I have known personally to have been diagnosed with cancer. For the few weeks following the diagnosis, she came to school and seemed to be leading a normal life. It was not until she started her chemotherapy treatments that I began to notice significant changes in her body and in her behavior. She lost an extreme amount of weight in a short amount of time, and she seemed to always be low in energy and overall morale. She stopped coming to school, and came dangerously close to dropping out of high school. But shortly after I had realized she hadn’t been coming to school, she was back in classes, looking just as healthy as before she had started her chemo. I asked around and found out that she had been smoking marijuana with every meal, which enabled her to maintain a healthy diet and gain back the weight she had lost. In Virginia, marijuana is currently illegal for both medicinal and recreational use. So this act was technically against the law, and could have cost her a great deal of penalties. This idea seems very anti-intuitive; punishing someone for engaging in something that harms nobody, and allows them to resume a healthy lifestyle.

Cancer, however, is not the only disease whose patients have seen benefits from medical marijuana. Anxiety and agitation are both feelings associated with Alzheimer’s Disease, and the conditions seem to worsen at night. THC, the active compound found in marijuana, has been observed to inhibit the effects of the enzymes in the human body that are associated with anxiety and agitation. This is a considerable observation, as the number of those affected by Alzheimer’s in the United States is expected to triple within the next 50 years due to the aging of baby boomers. Chronic and neuropathic  pain have also been observed to be helped by the use of marijuana. Neuropathic pain, or pain related to the nervous system, has been associated with diseases such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and HIV. Studies have shown that marijuana is effective in mitigating the effects of pain from these various diseases.

But only recently, the medical benefits of marijuana legalization have gone beyond the benefits provided to these patients mentioned above. Due to the current marijuana laws in the United States, cannabis rules can vary from hospital-to-hospital, and many hospitals will deny patients of various treatments based on the results of drug tests. This was unfortunately the case for 20 year-old Riley Hancey, a man from Utah who was denied a double-lung transplant necessary to save his life after he was diagnosed with a severe case of pneumonia this past November. Riley was denied transplant at not only the University of Utah hospital, but at a number of other hospitals. Riley would go on to lose his life. Had marijuana been legal, Riley would have received the help he needed and deserved. So are current marijuana policies in the United States fair in that someone who has marijuana in their system should not receive the same level of medical attention as someone who does not have marijuana in their system? For some, this matter is not as serious, as most in the country are not facing life-or-death scenarios. For Riley Hancey, however, the matter was life-or-death. Marijuana policies have now been proven to restrict people from receiving medical help they need, so it should be considered why citizens’ best health interests are not being made a priority.