http://www.nida.nih.gov/WhatsNew/
Go to this NIDA URL and look up Marijuana Research and Dissemination Update - March 2004 [PDF format - 248 Kb] - posted March 12, 2004
You have to download it in PDF format
It has all the current research available you will ever need if you choose to read it.
I am also familiar with the RWJF, and frankly getting the "truth about marijuana" from an organization funded by them is about as likely as getting the "truth about nuclear energy" from an organization funded by Greenpeace.
A NIDA site is your unimpeachable reference? What will happen to NIDA's staff if the naturally occuring recreational drugs are all legalized?
The DEA's own Young commission, in 1988, like NIXON's (NOT the democrats) 1972 commission on Marijuana, when they actually did head to head comparisons of scientific studies, (with the deck ludicrously stacked in favor of marijuana prohibition) were forced to conclude that marijuana, on it's track record, does less harm than almost everything on the grocery shelf.
the DEA's own numbers refute the gateway argument. The DEA places the number of marijuana users in the country at about 30 million. The DEA puts the combined number of heroin and cocaine addicts is about a million. For those paying attention, that's not even correlation, much less causality. This is a problem with much of your argument here. Correlation is not causality, and anecdotal evidence without statistics makes a feeble case, even if you are so convinced that you are willing to hold your breath until you turn blue. This is a common problem with cops and health workers--they see all the people too stupid to cope with their addictions crash and burn in public, and assume what they perceive is gospel about how the universe works.
These commisions were big news in their time, because they were headline-grabbers staffed by conservatives with the charter to put the kibosh on the anti-prohibition argument for all time. They drew on all the available evidence, and because they were adult scientists who know the difference between coorelation and causality, and because they were under public scrutiny, were forced to make a weighted, objective valuation of the available evidence. Squibs from NIDA, or any other special interest group are farting into a hurricane, unless they are willing to address the arguments and evidence of the Nixon and Young commissions.
Which, of course, no one ever does, because they are unanswerable. That's why civil authorities never call them to public attention. Prohibitionists like to take the stance that they are the responsible parties in this argument. They are sadly mistaken. They carefully avoid looking at the strongest arguments of their opponents, secure in the knowledge that ultimately, they win this argument at gunpoint.
Marijuana's harmfulness, as a matter of statistically verifiable evidence, is pitiful compared to hundreds of things we tolerate without notice. Putting children, or their parents, for that matter, in jail over it is like setting grandma on fire to clean a stain on her apron.