Marijuana
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Marijuana Marijuana or hemp (Cannabis sativa) is among twelfth-grade students. Currently, marijuana is a plant that has been cultivated for thousands of years in various parts of the world for its fiber, seeds, medicinal, and psychoactive properties. The chemical compounds responsible for the intoxicating and therapeutic effects are found in the sticky resin released from the flowers of female plants. The marijuana plant contains more than 400 known compounds of which about 60 have a structure similar to cannabinoids. The main psychoactive substance is generally believed to be delta-9tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Cannabinoids act on a specific receptor that is widely distributed in the brain regions involved in cognition, memory, pain perception, and motor coordination. Marijuana (“grass,” “weed,” “pot”) is prepared by drying the leaves and the flowering tops of the plant, and may be smoked in a rolled cigarette (“joint”), in a pipe, or, more recently, in a cigar (“blunt”). Hashish consists of dried cannabis resin and generally contains higher levels of THC. Cannabis preparations may also be eaten or drunk as a tea, but smoking is the easiest way to achieve the desired psychoactive effects. In the United States and most of the developed world, cannabis is an illegal substance and is primarily used for its psychoactive properties. However, for centuries marijuana has been used in various parts of the world not only as an intoxicating agent but also as a medicinal substance. From 1850 until 1937, cannabis was used in American medical practice for a wide range of conditions. The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 introduced the first federal restrictions on marijuana and outlawed the nonmedicinal, untaxed possession or sale of the drug. The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 classified marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance. Since then, there have been several attempts to legalize its medical use. In 1987, the Food and Drug Administration approved dronabinol, a compound containing synthetic THC, as a Schedule II controlled substance for treatment of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. In the United States, cannabis became a major drug of abuse in the late 1960s, with peak usage occurring in the late 1970s and early 1980s. According to the Monitoring the Future Survey, in 1979, about 51% of high school seniors reported having used marijuana at least once in the past 12 months. The lowest levels of use occurred in 1992 with about 22% reporting annual use. The 1990s saw the resurgence of use, and annual
the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States according to the 2001 edition of the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Despite the fact that cannabis is one of the most widely used psychoactive substances in the world, its health and psychological effects are still not well understood and remain the subject of much debate. Due to its legal status, clinical studies of marijuana are difficult to conduct. As a result, data on the adverse effects of the drug are more extensive than
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