Marijuana

The term marijuana refers to the dried flowers of the cannabis plant. These flowers are typically smoked to produce a psychoactive high. The flowers and other parts of the plant can be processed into hashish, oils, extracts, and other refined products that can be smoked, eaten, and vaporized. The effects of the high can change and often vary depending on what the user consumes. General effects of a marijuana high include altered sensory perception, with particularly profound impacts on sight, sound, and taste. It can also induce temporal distortions, making time seem to pass more slowly. Mood changes can occur as these effects tend to be dependent on the user’s mental and emotional state. Many users report that the high causes difficulty with sequential reasoning and problem-solving, but stimulates creativity and free-associative thought. At very high doses, marijuana can also create delusions and hallucinations. Smoked or vaporized marijuana enters the bloodstream quickly, while edible preparations are absorbed at a slower rate and usually take at least thirty to sixty minutes to produce any noticeable effects.

Marijuana also has medicinal applications, and its increasing use as a holistic therapy has helped the development of new delivery methods. These include tinctures, balms, transdermal patches, and micro-dosing preparations. Recent statistics indicate that recreational marijuana use is common in the United States. According to data published in the Washington Post in 2017, 55 million American adults, which is about 22 percent of the population, are current marijuana users, while 56 percent of Americans believe marijuana use is “socially acceptable.” Though federal law has prohibited the sale and possession of marijuana since 1937, public opinion surveys indicate that about 60 percent of the American population favors some legalization of marijuana. Allowing marijuana use for medical purposes has more popular support than legalizing its recreational use.

There is a growing advocacy movement for marijuana, which would erase previous convictions from the criminal records of people found guilty of marijuana possession for personal use. However, with marijuana remaining prohibited at the federal level, there is no obvious path forward for such a policy at the national level, even though it has such a strong and growing public support.