Can I put in on this?
I know it sounds hypocritical to say legalize weed and in the same breath, but not coke/meth etc. But, I think the big difference between the herb and the chems is that herb users or abusers don't have 500 dollar a day habits and don't rip off their family and friends and anyone else they can scam to support their habit. As someone said, it's like water and food, an absolute necessity.
Further, the majority of us smokers (and I'm talking long term heavy smokers) could stop today, go through a few weeks to a month of feeling a little disjointed (what, no bongs or spliffs this morning?-breaking a social habit), tense and otherwise just 'not right'. But we wouldn't end up a screaming mess or sick to the point of wanting to die.
The herb, for all intents and purposes is harmless in that respect. The chems take you over.
About 7 or 8 years ago, just after she moved out of home, my daughter started to change. She'd always been slightly hyper, but she would have days going at a million mile an hour, then days of deep depression. I broached the subject with my (now ex), but she wouldn't have a bar of it. 'Her daughter wouldn't do *speed*'. I made the point of visiting my daughter and in the course of conversations with her friends, hinted that if my kid was on the wizz, I'd hunt down and kill whoever was supplying her and whoever was encouraging her. I don't know what happened as a result of those yarns, but I do know that a lot of her friends 'moved on'.
Nowadays I know she isn't using. I have no idea for how long she did (she wasn't living at home), but I do have it on good authority that she was heading downhill at a rocketing pace. Something must have frightened shit out of her and she stopped the wizz and stuck with the weed. She used to be a big smoker too, but she's slowed down a lot. She's on anti-depressants (three years now), has had numerous minor breakdowns and has been suicidal in the past. She will be 25 this year and I don't see her enough to know how she is, but I'm hoping she'll be OK. I love her too much to have to see her killed off by chems.