Marijuana

What's with the effort to make medical marijuana illegal? What gives with helping severly sick people cope with their treatments to find some semblance of a life? I hear all the arguments against it and I don't understand their reasons and logic. The arguments for it aren't for legalizing it for everyone, that's another arugment, but for people with medical conditions with prescriptions from doctors to grow, carry and use marijuana for personal use. What's the harm?

What bothers me the most are the people who claim marijuana leads to hardcore drug use. Can someone cite me the studies? It has nothing to do with marijuana, it's about the individual. How many millions have used marijuana, including many people with careers, homes, families, and living normal lives? And how many hardcore drug users are there, and how many them started solely with marijuana? The numbers don't add up to justify this logic. The same argument could be made for beer.

I don't hear these people demanding we outlaw alcohol because it can lead to the abuse of hard liquor. Doesn't that logic make more sense? It's mostly because once you're 21 you can buy any liquor you want. It's not really about the drug but about several factors, among them, peer pressure, social acceptance, access, and the individual. Everyone has a susceptibility to addiction in some form, and it's a matter of access, convenience, and trigger events.

What about all those hippies that use it during the 1960 and 1970's who are contributing members of society today? I realize many won't want to express their use of it then but I think there's a lot of reason to say that it didn't hurt them in their later years and life. And I'll be honest, I was one and I had a good career and am still mentally and physically healthy today. It was the times then and the memories are still with me. Would I change them not to have used it? Sorry, no, I had a great time.

What about all those people who overuse and abuse over-the-counter and prescription drugs? I don't understand where they'll argue it's ok to prescribe all sorts of drugs to people for treatments, countering other drugs, reducing pain or side-effects, and so on, but they won't allow marijuana? I think it outragous we'll grant latitude to someone who abuses prescription drugs for a condition. And even worse, we'll treat them as heros overcoming their addiction, but we want to throw marijuana user in prison and ignore someone trying to live with a terminal disease. This is misplaced praise.

I'm sorry, the logic to make it illegal defies logic. In the end it seems to me it's less about helping the person but controlling their access to affordable alternatives, and keeping powerful drug and health insurance companies and lobbies in business and profitable, especially at the expense of ratepayers and taxpayers who are really paying the bills. Why not just let States regulate and manage it like they do any drug and let people have access to it for medical reasons?