Marijuana Should Not Be Legalized

想了解新的和未经考验的事物或热衷于在别人面前玩酷是今天的年轻人，他们在经济上对于新事物，政治，文化，技术和其他方面在整个世界继续保持一个非常快的速度，前所未有的发展。大麻，尽管非法药物为大家所熟知，为了自我满足，刺激，抑制压力，普遍采用的是大麻，即使育龄妇女和孕妇也纷纷拿起服用大麻的习惯，一旦他们接过来，他们无疑会沉迷于它。因此，以下将详细阐述真相，大麻不应该合法化，这将是合理的，在怀孕期间使用大麻的有害影响胎儿的大脑发育。

I. Introduction

Curious about new and untried things or eager to play cool in front of others are today’s youngsters, they continuously keep on trying new things as new things spring up in a very fast speed out of the unprecedented development in the economy, politics, culture, technology and other aspects in the whole world. Marijuana, though an illicit drug known to everyone, is still popular among celebrities and authorities in that marijuana brings the users illusion, self-satisfaction, stimulation and relief to get themselves rid of the cruel and unsatisfactory reality where they suffer a lot malaise, suppression and pressure, which makes them suffocated and breathless. So common used is marijuana that even women of reproductive age as well as pregnant women have picked up the habit of taking marijuana and once they took it, they will undoubtedly be addicted to it and they can’t help taking it ever since. One can imagine that a question about how marijuana use during pregnancy will affect fetal brain development will definitely follow and long-term epidemiological studies to assess the health outcomes of fetal exposure to Marijuana have been conducted, the findings varying much among them. Therefore the following will be the elaboration on the truth that marijuana should not be not legalized, which will be justified by the detrimental effects of marijuana use during pregnancy to fetal brain development. 

THC, the psychoactive components of marijuana and responsible for the vast majority of the detrimental effects of marijuana to human beings, is a lipid soluble compound that first crosses the placenta and then passes to the developing fetus. What was previously known about the effects of marijuana on brain development mainly focus on the following aspects: it will lead to the neurological disorder of the pregnant women and the infants inside, such as anxiety, confusion, delusion, depression, paranoia, psychosis and so on; it will cause damage to memory and behavior in that marijuana abuse can make the ability of memory, attention, calculation and judgment deteriorate or even just loss, if it is long-term, it can also cause degenerative encephalopathy, users’ thinking being slow or simple-minded and memory being confused; it will affect the immune system as it will do harm to cell and humoral immune function so that the fetal will be more susceptible to viral and bacterial infection; it will make both the pregnant women and the infants inside the victims of many diseases, like bronchitis, pharyngitis, asthma, laryngeal edema and something like that; the overdose of it will also influence the motor coordination out of its intrinsic destroy to the coordination function of the muscle movement, resulting in standing balance disorder, hand tremor, loss of ability to complexly operate frequently needed in the daily life; it will give rise to the deformity of nursling step by step with the dose of marijuana being taken by women of reproductive age increases; even worse it will touch off retention of dead fetus when bearing and abortion during the gestation period. 

All of the above is the basic situation of the detrimental effects of marijuana use during pregnancy to fetal brain development of the general studies. Specifically speaking, heavy use of marijuana during pregnancy can impair social behaviors, cognition, and motor functions in the offspring, with impact lasting well into adulthood (Fried et al, 2002; Huizink & Mulder, 2006; Passey et al, 2014; Shabani et al, 2014). Although cannabis is viewed by many as a harmless recreational drug when compared with other illicit drugs, there is mounting evidence to suggest that prenatal cannabis exposure can have a negative effect on fetal growth and that exposure to cannabis during periods of critical brain development, particularly during the fetal and adolescent periods, has the propensity to significantly adversely impact on neurodevelopmental and behavioral outcomes (Jaques et al, 2014). Such effects of marijuana use during pregnancy to fetal brain development can be heard without end and there’s wide controversy existing in the current literature, for instance, around study design and interpretation and how relevant animal studies are to humans. As for the approaches being applied by the previous studies, it ranges from pharmacological methods, organotypic slice preparations, quantitative and qualitative morphometric analysis to unbiased proteomic profiling. 

In order to get the concrete detrimental effects of marijuana use during pregnancy to fetal brain development, what must be mentioned is the study made by Tortoriello and his colleagues in The EMBO Journal called Miswiring the brain: delta9-tetrahydrocannabinoldisrupts cortical development by inducing an SCG10/stathmin-2 degradation pathway, which will be abbreviated as Tortoriello paper. Why it deserves that is that this study has got the exact result of the appointed question and it has employed an approach with a combination of pharmacological methods, organotypic slice preparations, quantitative and qualitative morphometric analysis and unbiased proteomic profiling, which be elaborately explained in the following.

II. The Effects of Marijuana Use during Pregnancy to Fetal Brain Development in Tortoriello Paper

Tortoriello paper has found that children exposed in utero to cannabis present permanent neuron-behavioral and cognitive impairments by showing that repeated THC exposure disrupts endocannabinoid signaling, particularly the temporal dynamics of CB1 cannabinoid receptor, to rewire the fetal cortical circuitry in that THC enables ectopic formation of filopodia and alters axon morphology, disabling the  spatial specificity of endocannabinoid cues in the developing brain by indiscriminately activating CB1RS, even at unfavorable subcellular positions (Tortoriello et al, 2014). 

Moreover, the findings also include that cannabis exposure of infants in utero or cannabis use in teenagers can coincide with critical periods of brain development when neuronal connectivity is prenatally established or postnatally refined to increase modularity and integrative capacity. Accordingly, prospective longitudinal assessments suggests that cannabis use during pregnancy can increase the risk for ill-behaviors, cognitive deficit, drug seeking, attention deficit, and anxiety and depression among affected neonatal or adolescent offspring (Tortoriello et al, 2014). In addition, this paper mentions that growth retardation and the developmental deficits in the nervous system are associated with maternal cannabis use.

In order for the concrete detrimental effects of marijuana use during pregnancy to fetal brain development, the paper authors established mouse models amenable to study the molecular underpinnings of life-long circuit modifications and during that experiment they noted that cannabis can introduce epigenetic modifications and attenuate synaptic neurotransmission as its psychoactive component THC will impair endocannabinoid-mediated mechanisms of cortical development, induce long-term structural and functional modifications of the cortical circuitry, bring in epigenetic modifications like repressive histone methylation, displace the binding of high-efficacy endocannabinoids while dampening the signaling efficacy, impair the cortical wiring map, axonal growth and guidance and the establishment of the corticofugal tract by disrupting endocannabinoid signaling (Tortoriello et al, 2014).

Among the above, the most important one is that THC will impair axonal growth and guidance as SCG10, contributing to the maintenance of cytoskeletal instability for axonal growth, will reduce in THC-exposed brains. SCG10, a bona fide target of THC, coincides with the formation of intra- and extracortical axonal trajectories and is mandatory to maintain dynamic microtubule instability required for axonal growth. SCG10, the degradation of which advances morphological growth cone differentiation, will undergo JNK-dependent degradation and fast anterograde axonal transport and accumulate in the central domain of advancing growth cones. In a word, the vast majority of the detrimental effects of marijuana to fetal brain development are the harm to the central nervous system, whose modifications can directly and permanently impair the wiring diagram of neuronal networks during corticogensis (Tortoriello et al, 2014).

With mouse models, the so-called experimental models, amenable in this experiment, it is so informative that the variables, non-variables and other relevant data can all be reflected in this model. What’s more, the mouse models being preferred also results from that this model can be well-controlled and are bound to get the experimenters the expected results as long as them can organize it orderly and logically under various situations without being affected by the outside changes.

The findings of this paper is unanimous with previously published results on the effects of Cannabis on brain development, what differentiates this paper from the previous ones is that this paper provides support for the past ones with more specific evidence and more impressive graphs and tables in a vivid and logical way. Furthermore, this paper has, in the meantime, supplied our readers the illustrations for each graph and table in order that we can get a better understanding of them through the awareness of the detrimental effects of marijuana to fetal brain development, leading to the use of marijuana's being reduced or more willingly decreased directly to zero due to the harm from a large extent. The several variables being excluded in the process of the experiment ensures the precision of the experiment’s result and at the same time endows them with more convincing and persuasive effects for readers so that we will get our attitudes serious and face the problem in a straight mode. 

Whenever it comes to the question of whether the press release “The consumption of Cannabis during pregnancy can impair the development of the fetus’ brain with long-lasting effects after birth.” accurately represents the findings of the paper, a voice will always cry out that it can’t accurately represent the findings of this paper. There’s no doubt that I am one of the voice and why I hold that view is that the press release emphasizes more on the long-lasting detrimental effects of marijuana to fetal brain development after birth but taking no regard of the detrimental effects of marijuana to fetal brain development before the infants are born. While on the other hand, the paper discussed here refers to the detrimental effects of marijuana to fetal brain development both from before the infants are born and after they are born with the major focusing on the detrimental effects of marijuana to fetal brain development when children are still in utero. And the press release doesn’t mention what will impair the development of the fetus’ brain with long-lasting effects after birth and in what way it will impair the development of the fetus’ brain with long-lasting effects after birth and also the reasons, while this paper has studied a lot on them and has explained it very minutely, clearly and immediately based on a list of experiments. 

Apart from the above, I have even carried out a survey that is designed for pregnant women’s personal feelings toward taking marijuana so that I can get more real statistics as for how marijuana will make influence to pregnant women. This survey is implemented by personally going to a nearby hospital for gynaecology and obstetrics where there are many pregnant women available. The number of the pregnant women that I have surveyed is 50 and all of their result is effective as I have personally take part in the whole process of survey. All the questionnaires that have been handed out have all been collected without omission so that there is no invalid data and in the meanwhile all the questionnaires are also collected not long after they have been finished so that the answers on them are to some degree human beings’ first thought, as have not been rectified by. As all the subjects in this research have been told that their personal information will be completely secret to anyone else and will cause no influence to whatever aspect in their daily life so that they can be reassured to tell the truth of what they really hold toward those questions listed on the questionnaires so that the reliability of the research can be guaranteed in the meanwhile. Moreover all the questionnaires that have been handed out have all been collected without omission so that there is no invalid data of this research occurring in the whole process, as can guarantee that this research has been endowed with high validity. 

In this way, it can increase the opportunity for human beings to believe the result of this paper more or less so that this paper can be played to the full. Three specific questions in the questionnaire will be taken as an example in the below: 

1. When you began to take marijuana?

a. before pregnancy.

b. after pregnancy. 

2. Do you regret that you have begun to take marijuana after you get the fact that it will cause influence to the infant?

a. Yes.

b. No.

C. Do not care. 

3. If there are other ways to get the same feelings as marijuana that will be rather hard but will not cause influence to the infants, will you give it a try?

a. Yes.

b. Maybe.

c. No.

d. It depends.

The results show that 81% of those pregnant women have taken marijuana before pregnancy while the rest of them began to have that habit after pregnancy. And 95% of them say that they will undoubted be regretful that they have taken marijuana if they know that it will cause influence to the infants’ health. Therefore it can be easily predicted that they will absolutely choose the other ways to get the same feelings as marijuana as long as it will not make influence to their infants. Though the result of the survey comes out to be 98%, it is still believable as well. 

III. Conclusion

To sum up, the concrete detrimental effects of marijuana use during pregnancy to fetal brain development can not be ignored but rather should be paid to as more attention as possible. For the sake of the infants, those women of reproductive age as well as pregnant women should from time to time bear in mind that even a breath of marijuana will affect their children a lot in the whole life; but the opposite is that the infants can grow healthy inside and live a happy life without the torture of the pain brought by the diseases after birth. Therefore it is everyone’s responsibility to actively identify women who have taken marijuana in the antenatal period and remind them of the possible and potential risks of it in a non-judgmental or non-threatening manner so that those women can cease use if possible or substantially decrease their using dose. And as to those who haven’t tried marijuana at all, it is a forbidden area for them to step into as it is a road with no return regardless of the strong curiosity toward it and admiration to those who used it. Last but not the least, it is hoped that everyone, including males, can avoid the marijuana use hand in hand and create a tomorrow without marijuana.

 
Bibliography
1. Fried et al, 2002; Huizink & Mulder, 2006; Passey et al, 2014; Shabani et al, 2014.
2. Jaques SC, Kingsbury A, Henshcke P, Chomchai C, Clews S, Falconer J, Abdel-Latif ME, Feller JM, Oei JL 2014 Cannabis, the pregnant woman and her child: weeding out the myths. J Perinatol 34: 417-424
3. Tortoriello G, Morris CV, Alpar A, Fuzik J, Shirran SL, Calvigioni D, Keimpema E, Botting CH, Reinecke K, Herdegen T, Courtney M, Hurd YL, Harkany T 2014 Miswiring the brain: Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol disrupts cortical development by inducing an SCG10/stathmin-2 degradation pathway. EMBO J 33: 668-685.



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