![Junior Grant Levins sprints down the track. "I'm here to try out because I love the sport of track and field and I'm working on my 800 [meter] time. Just trying to get better," Levins said.](https://www.wjpitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/g82ehdhTRiNswrE8gfn0tL9VRz7fuAnaiIKPCaOI-1200x900.jpg)
Medical marijuana has been a hot topic in the United States for many years.
Some believe that due to the success that cancer patients and other people with health problems have had with medical marijuana, that the drug should be legalized everywhere. On December 1, a medical marijuana dispensary open at Wildwood Medical Center on Old Georgetown Road. In 2017, legislation was introduced in the state legislature to legalize, tax, and regulate recreational marijuana in the state. This made it very easy for Rise Dispensaries to open a facility right around the corner from WJ.
“I believe that medical marijuana should be beneficial to most people and yet limited to those who don’t need it,” said sophomore Rebecca Fuchs.
Due to the incredible amount of cancer patients who have had pain relief, it is very important that those patients are not denied the right to be healed. That is why it is so important that more dispensaries like Rise are opened.
There hasn’t been much pushback from the community here in Bethesda but sophomore Matt Roman was one to criticize.
“I understand that many people use marijuana to help with cancer, but I feel like there are already too many dispensaries out there that are just selling to anyone. This is unsafe and illegal. The last thing we need is even more teens with weed,” said Roman.
This is a incredibly valid argument as among persons aged 18 or older who reported lifetime marijuana use, almost 53 percent report first using marijuana between ages 12 and 17 according to Very Well Mind.
