10.6 million Nigerians have used cannabis in the previous year. In this context, I would like to remind you that drug use prevalence in Nigeria stood at 14.4 per cent of Nigeria’s population in the age group of 15 to 64 years. That means that the prevalence of past year drug use in Nigeria is more than twice the global average of 5.5 per cent. More than one third of cannabis users suffer from drug use disorders.
-The United Nations on Drug and Crime (UNODC) country representative, Oliver Stolpe on the world drug day, 2019
For a country yet to legalise marijuana, a drug use rate twice the global average in one year must sound perplexing, no doubt. In this piece, we discuss the health effects of marijuana on the body.
Marijuana comes from the dried flowers of cannabis plants. It has more than 500 chemicals. Cannabis can have a psychoactive or mind altering effect on you. The main psychoactive chemical agent in marijuana, delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) has been found to be responsible for the ‘high’ associated with marijuana use. The other compound Cannabidiol however counteracts the effect of THC and is even useful in treating side effects from chemotherapy and alleviating symptoms of epilepsy. Marijuana is usually taken in through two main ways, smoking and eating/drinking. The smoking route is the faster compared to the eating/drinking which still passes through digestive processing before it is absorbed into the blood stream.
Most Nigerians would probably believe marijuana is entirely bad, but this isn’t really the case. However, there’s unequivocal evidence that habitual or regular marijuana smoking is NOT harmless. Hence caution against regular heavy marijuana usage is prudent and highly advised. One way in which marijuana has been found to be of immense benefit to health is in the management of chronic pain. Marijuana or products containing cannabinoids— which are the active ingredients in marijuana, or other compounds that act on the same receptors in the brain as marijuana— are effective at relieving chronic pain.
Marijuana may also help people with alcohol or opioid dependencies to fight their addictions although this finding is actually contentious and concerns have been raised about findings that show that marijuana might actually drive an increased risk for abusing or becoming dependent on other substances. This is besides the fact that the more a person uses marijuana, the greater the tendency of developing an addiction for it. One might ask then, is it really worth it?
Marijuana has also been found to be of some use in treating symptoms of depression and post traumatic stress disorder.
Furthermore, evidence suggests that oral cannabinoids are effective against nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy, and some small studies have found that smoked marijuana may also help to alleviate these symptoms.
About marijuana, the question of ‘how good?’ has been answered here. The question of ‘how bad?’ will be answered in the adjoining article.
Reference: www.cdc.gov
