The legalization of marijuana for recreational use has become a controversial topic of discussion in the United States. Marijuana can have many negative consequences on the body and the brain, which can affect people for the rest of their lives. After using marijuana, the user could become addicted, which could potentially ruin their life. It can endanger the lives of other people by driving after using marijuana or smoking it in the presence of young kids. With all of the negative effects of marijuana, it should not be legalized for recreational use in the United States.
Marijuana not only can affect the user, but it can also cause many harmful consequences for other people’s lives. Secondhand smoke has very dangerous consequences …show more content…
People who use it a lot become dependent on having it, and have to do anything they can to smoke it. When they cannot get the drug, they start to have problems such as decreased appetites and restlessness, and smoking marijuana remains as their first priority and overtakes more important things such as family and food. The younger that a person starts using marijuana, the higher probability that they will become addicted. “People who began using marijuana before the age of 18 are 4 to 7 times more likely to develop a marijuana use disorder than adults (“Is Marijuana Addictive”).” With the way that marijuana can affect learning and memory, it makes it harder for the youth that smoke it to graduate from high school or college. All of these kids put themselves at a higher risk of becoming depressed from using the product. Doctors have identified many different signs and symptoms of marijuana to identify whether someone has an addiction. Some of those include: distorted perceptions, impaired coordination, difficulty in thinking, and learning and memory problems. For someone to have an addiction, these signs and symptoms occur many …show more content…
Many of the effects on the body happen immediately, while some of them occur over the long-term course of someone’s life. Marijuana use has many of the same effects on the respiratory system and specifically the lung, as tobacco does. “If you’re a regular smoker you’re at an increased risk of bronchitis, lung infections, and lung cancer, and marijuana may aggravate existing respiratory illnesses like asthma and cystic fibrosis (Pietrangelo).” Along with the respiratory problems, marijuana has a negative effect on a person’s brain development. It affects people under the age of twenty-one more than it does older adults, as most the brain develops the most before the age of twenty-one. Most of the memory problems that occur usually have only temporary consequences, but sometimes it turns into a long term problem, that disrupts people for the rest of their lives. A person’s heart raise can increase after using marijuana, and this can happen very quickly after using it. “Within minutes, your heart rate may increase by 20 to 50 beats per minutes (Pietrangelo).” An increase in heart rate of that amount can cause severe people that have a heart disease or some problems with their