rs put the war against drugs ahead of the treatment of pain for suffering Americans. Thousands of Americans currently smoke marijuana for purely medical reasons: to ease the nausea of chemotherapy; to reduce the pain of multiple sclerosis and other debilitating diseases; to alleviate the symptoms of glaucoma; to improve appetite among people dying from AIDS; and for much else (Nadelmann 100). They use marijuana over any other drug, because it works best for them. Many of these people never smoked marijuana until they discovered its medicinal value. Some are elderly. Some don't really enjoy taking a drug by smoking it and enjoy its physical effects. But virtually all of them are regarded as criminals under the law, and every year many are arrested and jailed.
             Although dependence on marijuana is not common, some marijuana fighters believe that this drug is addictive. Some time during four or five years of heaviest use, one in ten users become dependent on marijuana. A study on lab rats proves this fact. Two scientists tested caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana on these rats. The scientists had similar results. One of the scientists had a tie between caffeine and marijuana being least addictive, and the other showed marijuana being slightly less addictive than caffeine (Lowry 36-37).
             Many people are misinformed that marijuana is a far more harmful drug than alcohol and tobacco. If tobacco and alcohol are less harmful than marijuana, then why are hundreds of thousands of people a year killed by these two drugs? Marijuana very rarely kills anyone because lethal overdose cannot occur. Marijuana's only clear health risk is respiratory damage, and cigarettes have done the same damage. Animal tests have revealed that extremely high doses of cannabis are needed to have a lethal effect. This led scientists to conclude that the amount of marijuana necessary to get a person intoxicated to the amou...