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Sounds like you've had a tough time watching them self-destruct. I'm truly sorry to hear that. However, by your own admission, each was doing drugs other than marijuana. That's makes it difficult if not impossible to determine which drug did what damage, or caused what behavioral changes.

With regards to the study you are citing, there is the correlation/causation problem which is not addressed:

The other study from an Australian team found that people who smoked marijuana developed psychotic symptoms 2.7 years earlier than people who weren’t pot-smokers.

Here we have a case where the question must be asked, "Which came first, the desire to smoke marijuana to alleviate mental health issues, or mental health issues that arose from marijuana smoking?" In this study, it is easy to see how people with existing mental health issues would have taken to pot sooner than those without mental health issues, and that would skew the data.

Now, let's be clear here: I would never say that pot smoking is good for you. No sane person would. Obviously, marijuana is going to have some kind of negative effect on a person. There is a lot of supposition and hysteria that replaces good science on the subject, unfortunately. Alcohol is not good for you, either. Why isn't alcohol banned? It was once, so why did we stop? If you look at the issues surrounding Prohibition, and why we stopped, they would darn near be identical to the issues we see with the War on Drugs now, and yet we reject as insane and fringe the idea that we should take the same approach?

I drink two glasses of red wine a day, with the approval of my doctor. It has been verified to be beneficial to one’s health and best of all, it is LEGAL. Illegal drugs are illegal for a reason — the use ruins not just the lives of those who use, but of everyone else around them.

Smoking anything at all is not healthy, period. Marijuana for medicinal use is available in derivative form for medicinal use, but cannot provide a ‘high’. So all the excuses about how it is necessary for medical reasons is a bunch of crap.

Oh, no; old stoners can’t have that capsule without the high! The whole reason for the legalization of drugs is to get stoned, no matter the social or personal health reasons.

I’ve noticed that the people on Free Republic calling for legalization of drugs talk as though no one else in the world matters to them. Why so self-centered? This attitude is not healthy.