vomiting of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. The benefit of marijuana over ondansetron, however, is the price. In countries where marijuana has been decriminalized, the effective dose costs approximately thirty to forty cents, as opposed to thirty or forty dollars per ondansetron pill. Recently, voters in the District of Columbia, Alaska, Oregon, Nevada, Washington, and Arizona voted to suspend legal punishment of any person using marijuana under the supervision of a physician.The war on drugs is still in full effect. Despite several medical studies insisting on the partial or full decriminalization of cannabis and medical marijuana bills winning popular approval on state ballots, there are more marijuana-related arrests now than ever before. During Bill Clinton’s Presidency, ten million people have been arrested on marijuana-related charges, a sixty percent increase since Clinton took office (Gieringer).David Baggins sums up the viewpoint of those in favor of some degree of decriminalization when he writes on page 70 of Drug Hate and the Corruption of American Justice , “Ninety-five percent of the nations illegal drug users smoke marijuana exclusively. The term ‘gateway drug’ sometimes used to describe it is false; only a small percentage of its users ever move on to hard drugs. Over the last decades numerous objective studies were commissioned on the health implications of smoking marijuana. All have concluded that criminalization of the user is a far greater health hazard than any inherent property of the drug itself. The Kaiser Foundation, after reviewing all studies of marijuana, concluded that there is no evidence of the use of marijuana as cause of any life-threatening health condition.”The debate over the partial decriminalization of cannabis for medicinal purposes will rage on, and will likely be resolved on a state-by-state basis. The argument over the complete decriminalization of marijua...
