US: Chemical based "marijuana" is legal in the US

I hope you don't mind me asking for elaboration. Not at all to be argumentative, just my curiosity.

I don't mind at all. I was 15 in 1967, and I was a flower child (at weekends anyway) and I pretty soon got to like pot. I was having a complex time coping with adolescence (who doesn't?) and it seemed to be a magic solution. As I grew older I hung out with "alternative" type people and pot was considered normal. For a long while I failed to achieve my full potential academically or careerwise and I feel that the lazy and stupefied state of mind that pot encouraged (note: not caused) played a part in this. I noticed a few years ago that pot "wasn't like it was". I didn't get stoned like I used to. I used to smoke one or two joints every weekday evening and maybe twice as much at weekends. My partner and friends however said I still acted stoned though. So nearly 4 years ago I just stopped. After about a month I felt more alert and my partner said I appeared to be "having moods" - that is, ups and downs of affect rather than being always on the same level because I was stoned. Like normal people. Also I have noticed that I don't need to smoke a joint to make good music sound good.

I know a number of people, including myself, who stopped smoking pot because they started to react badly to it.

I suppose it has to do with different body chemistries.

I also know people who react badly to alcohol.

And the majority of people in the world ( also including myself) are somewhat lactose intolerant.

I'm not about to advise people not to drink milk, though.

Smoking pot all the time is probabably not a very good idea - neither is drinking alcohol all the time or eating all the time.  Everything in moderation.

ETA: Out of curiosity, I did a search for "cannabis" on the NHS website and all I could find were pages and pages about how horribly dangerous cannabis is. Nothing at all about its medical benefits.


Also, as someone who had a grandparent with schizophrenia, I'm offended by all the pages about how smoking cannabis "causes" schizophrenia.  Schizophrenia is a complicated biochemical disorder with a genetic component.  Cannabis may aggravate the symptoms in someone who is already beginning to develop the disease. People who are already experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia (which aren't just "hearing voices") may use cannabis to relieve them if they don't have access to medical treatment or if the medical treatment isn't working or has unacceptable side affects.

But you can't "make" someone schizophrenic by having them smoke cannabis.