States around the country — more than 20 in total — have been legalizing medical marijuana.
Recently, CNN's chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta reversed his opinion on medical marijuana.
While recreational marijuana is controversial, many people agree with Gupta's new stance, and believe that the drug should be legal for medical uses.
While the benefits of smoking pot may be overstated by advocates of marijuana legalization, the new legalization will help researchers study the drugs' medicinal uses, and better understand how it impacts the body.
Currently only 6% of studies on Marijuana analyze its medicinal properties.
Keep in mind, though, that there are negative effects of smoking too much pot or using it for non-medicinal purposes. When overused or abused, pot can cause dependency and mess with your memory and emotions.
There are at least two active chemicals in Marijuana that researchers think have medicinal application. Those are cannabidiol (CBD) — which seems to impact the brain without a high— and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — which has pain relieving properties.
Also keep in mind that these same health benefits can be gained by taking THC pills, Dronabinol, which in some ways is more effective than smoked marijuana.
Randy Astaiza contributed to an earlier version of this story.
It can be used to treat Glaucoma.
Marijuana use can be used to treat and prevent the eye disease glaucoma, which increases pressure in the eyeball, damaging the optic nerve and causing loss of vision.
Marijuana decreases the pressure inside the eye, according to the National Eye Institute: "Studies in the early 1970s showed that marijuana, when smoked, lowered intraocular pressure (IOP) in people with normal pressure and those with glaucoma."
These effects of the drug may slow the progression of the disease, preventing blindness.
It may help reverse the carcinogenic effects of tobacco and improve lung health.
According to a study published in Journal of the American Medical Association in January 2012, marijuana does not impair lung function and can even increase lung capacity.
Researchers looking for risk factors of heart disease tested the lung function of 5115 young adults over the course of 20 years. Tobacco smokers lost lung function over time, but pot users actually showed an increase in lung capacity.
It's possible that the increased lung capacity may due to taking a deep breaths while inhaling the drug and not from a therapeutic chemical in the drug.
It can help control epileptic seizures.
Marijuana use can prevent epileptic seizures, a 2003 study showed.
Robert J. DeLorenzo, of Virginia Commonwealth University, gave marijuana extract and synthetic marijuana to epileptic rats. The drugs rid the rats of the seizures for about 10 hours. Cannabinoids like the active ingredients in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (also known as THC), control seizures by binding to the brain cells responsible for controlling excitability and regulating relaxation.
The findings were published in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.
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