The problem is that anti-marijuana fascists say stupid things about how marijuana causes cancer, and smoking a joint it the same as smoking a pack if cigarettes. People get confused when they're fed disinformation and it doesn't help anybody.
As I recall, the root-reason that marijuana is illegal was for political reasons. Pot came up from Mexico. The white boys had just killed off the Indians and taken their land, then suddenly more guys come up from Mexico that they can't completely kill off (long live the Alamo). So now there are all these undesirable Mexicans hanging about, and it seems they like smoking pot while the white cowboys stick to their toxic booze. So the gubmint passes laws against pot smoking as a way to kick those Mexican (pot-smoking) asses outta Texas. And so the law stands. It’s not much of a big deal for the next 50 years because the white guys that passed the law and kicked the Mexicans out were booze hounds and not into the marijuana thing. Dope then laid underground for some Mexicans, outlaws, and free blacks—especially jazz musicians.
Then in the 1950s, the beatniks “re-discovered” pot an alternative to the Eisenhower white-guy squares. The squares carried on the tradition of opposition to dope that carried from the exportation of Mexicans (although they didn’t even know that was what they were doing). The cultural division led to things like “Reefer Madness” (a very corny film) and total rejection of marijuana by the older white class and an acceptance of marijuana by the younger white class. As baby-boomers got older, the hippie generation turned to the yuppie generation with a focus on materialism and generally denouncing 1970s drug-addled coke-filled “Me Generation” that creeped up in the interim.
The Reagan administration revitalized nostalgic 1950s policies to reinstate the white-boy mentality that was based on policies from almost 100 years ago with Nancy’s “Just Say No” and the familiar “This is your brain on drugs”. Of course drugs became a major issue, because crack first came on the scene and gang crime (fueled by drug wars) were at an all time high. By the time Bill “I didn’t inhale” Clinton took office, the idea that “marijuana is bad” had had been built into gang wars and the Nancy Regan revitalization of the “Reefer Madness” view on pot.
In the 1990s, with an explosion of information (popularity of cable TV, the Internet) , the extensiveness of pot smoking, across wide groups of people, became apparent to the masses that had not realized that thousands upon thousands of people had been smoking it for the past 20 years with little problem, and even little notice.
Now we have crack and meth causing more problems than ever, and rehab is more popular than ever and alcohol and tobacco are well known to be much worse than pot. But the stigma created through the years continues.
If alcohol and tobacco are legal, there is no reason for marijuana to be illegal. For both physical and mental health, it is better than either alcohol and/or tobacco.
Full disclosure: I don’t smoke marijuana and don’t intend to. However I see no reason for it to be illegal.
