The Aspects of Legalization of Marijuana in the Philippines

In the Philippine constitution marijuana or cannabis has been illegal in accordance with Republic Act No. 6425, or the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1972, since it is the second most used drug in the Philippines after methamphetamine or as we all know “shabu”. The concern about the risks of abuse led to a ban on the use of cannabis medicinal products. In the present day marijuana remains illegal in the Philippines because of several rules and regulations and that hinders researchers or scientist in our country to do a full blast research on what are the possible benefits and on the effectiveness of marijuana as used for medicinal purposes, it also makes it difficult for people who actually need to use it as medicine and it can be quite expensive if it would be coming from other countries the produces it. According to (Kogan and Mechoulam, 2007) It does claim to help and treat a lot of patients that needed prevention and especially as the cure for their illnesses, marijuana shows that it can treat glaucoma, nausea, epilepsy, asthma, cancer, chronic pain, cardiovascular disorders, schizophrenia, and many other conditions. Cannabinoids or Marijuana is too beneficial and has the potential to improve our country’s clinical industry, thus, I think that medical marijuana should be legal in the Philippines.

Here in the Philippines, we commonly think of marijuana that it could only give bad effects on people who use it because of the factor that it is addicting in which people are having difficulty in controlling their drug use as it elicits effects on our mood and on how we think, some studies have shown that it could impair a person's cognitive functioning through recreational cannabis dependence, but for the contrary, according to Meier (2018) as stated in her published journal that the use of cannabis had nothing to do with the IQ decline or impairing cognitive functions of an individual, she stated that the factors that may cause their impairment is based on family background. Another different annotation with marijuana is that according to (Wilkinson, 2013) there is legalizing recreational marijuana can cause negative effects on the public and the use of marijuana lacks in evidence for it therapeutic benefits, Many studies have shown that there is a therapeutic claim that marijuana can treat different conditions, according to (Reynold, 2015) that in his study, with the moderate of regular use of marijuana it helps prevents or delays the onset, the progression of Alzheimer’s disease and different neurodegenerative conditions to give more example he stated that marijuana has anti-cancer properties in which in can be used as treatment for basal cell carcinoma or cancer, he concluded that marijuana offers significant therapeutic benefits.

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Marijuana is often characterized as one of the safest drugs out there, because it has never been definitively involved with cases of overdose death, unless it is combined with other substance like opioid, cocaine, etc., and it’s broadly safer than other drugs like alcohol, tobacco, cocaine, and heroin. Marijuana is also known as weed, herb, pot, grass, bud, ganja, Mary Jane or the famous term, Cannabis. It is a psychoactive drug from a cannabis plant intended for recreational and medical purposes by smoking, infusing it with oils, including it in foods as an ingredient, and etc. This would help a lot of patient for example those who experience epilepsy, according to Reddy and Golub (2016), that the use of marijuana or cannabinoids have shown to have benefits on epileptic patients wherein it lessens the frequency and duration of seizures as claimed in the surveys by their respondents which are the majority of patients and caregivers. In an article, according to (Rhyne et al., 2016) their research statistics states that patients who use medical marijuana for their migraine have shown that it can reduce the recurrence of their migraine per month as they use it daily.

Marijuana was used to treat conditions thousand years ago before it was banned, in many countries for example in China, they use it as an anesthetic, in India’s Iron age, it was one of their common herbs which they say that it relieves anxiety. After it was banned for more than a decade, they begun to legalize it again in many countries, as for 2018 over 30 countries have legalized cannabis for example, Canada and Uruguay they allowed the use of marijuana for medical and recreation, in Uruguay you can buy a maximum of 10 grams per week, while almost all other countries only legalized it for medical purposes. In my opinion, individuals with illnesses in the Philippines should have access to marijuana if they needed it because some of these conditions have the potential to be treated by the cannabinoid.

I there to conclude that Marijuana for medicinal purposes should be legalized at the same time with regulations, in the legalization of marijuana it has to have proper monitoring in terms of its dosage and uses. Yes, its legalization will increase the rate of recreational use and for some, it can be their gateway drug and for sure it will be addicting but the point is that it is effective and the patients in this country shouldn’t be hindered to use the benefits of this substance if necessary, despite its high probability of recreational use as it can result to drug addiction, it is a huge help for patient with epilepsy or any kind of illness to have the opportunity to use marijuana. It is unacceptable just to ignore their clinical capabilities when the cannabinoid therapeutic values are too high to be set aside, we need to work on this drug development instead. The innovation of such drugs needs, well-controlled clinical testing in order to establish therapeutic effectiveness, dose ranges, and pharmaceutical safety.