David Guard
Medical Marijuana Today

Specific purpose:
I want my audience to learn about about the research and the impact of medical marijuana on today’s society.

Thesis:
The use of marijuana to treat various medical conditions- or Medical marijuana - is a controversial topic and has been for quite sometime.

Attention getting device:
Under federal law, only FDA approved medications are legal to prescribe- and marijuana is not one of those. Still, currently nineteen states have approved its use to alleviate a variety of symptoms. In fact THC, The psychoactive or mind altering ingredient is a FDA approved medication. It was shown carefully in controlled clinical trials to have therapeutic benefits for relieving nausea associated with cancer chemotherapy and stimulating appetite in patients with AIDS. Doctors in those 19 states cannot prescribe MMJ, only recommend it.

Credibility:
I have had some interest of the use of MMJ at a time due to the fact I had a spinal chord injury in September of 2012. The pain was so bad that I was taking to many narcotic pain killers. So I researched other ways to relieve the pain. MMJ was one the routes I could take, but is illegal in Ohio and I’m not going to jeopardize my education and career. So I opted for surgery now i am 100% better.

Preview:
I would like to begin to tell you about the effects of marijuana and then I will explain about some research at Oxford University also I will touch on the subject of MMJ in todays society.

I. Marijuana is a dried green plant or flower. A.Marijuana is the most common illicit drug used in the united states.

1.The most common delivery of marijuana to the body is the plant being smoked. 2. Marijuana smoke has a pungent and distinctive, usually sweet and sour odor.

3. It can also be mixed in food or brewed as a tea.

B.The Main psychoactive drug in THC.

1. When marijuana is consumed, THC rapidly passes from the lungs to the bloodstream

C. Signs of using marijuana include rapid heart rate increased rate of breating red eyes dry mouth increased appetite (the munches) slowed reaction time

1. These effects are reduced after 3 or 4hrs. However marijuana hangs around in your system for as long as a month. After smoking/eating the drug.

[Transition: Now that we know the effects of marijuana, lets go over on how its used as medical marijuana.]

II.One of the chief arguments for the legalization of medical marijuana is its usefulness as a pain reliever. A. According to a article in Time magazine for many cancer and aids patients across the 19 states where medical use of the drug has been legalized, it has proven to be a valuable tool in managing chronic pain.

1. In some cases working for patients in which conventional pain killers are ineffective. 2.In Smithsonian magazine Oxford researchers used healthy volunteers, an MRI and doses of THC. Their findings suggest something counterintuitive: that the that the drug doesn’t so much reduce pain as much as make the pain more bearable. B. In this study Oxford recruited 12 healthy volunteers who said they never used marijuana before and gave each one either a THC tablet or a placebo. Then to trigger consistent level of pain, they rubbed a cream a compound that makes chili pepper spicy; In this case it caused a burning sensation on their skin.

1. The researchers found that with THC, on average the volunteers didn’t report any change in the burn, but the pain bothered them less.

C. This indicates that marijuana doesn’t function as a pain killer as much as a pain distractor.

1. patients where also put in a MRI machine -so researchers could try to