Let me be first! I for one believe marijuana should be given to cancer patients and any of those who are in pain, when nothing else seems to give any relief. Pot is not legal because the government doesn't know how to tax it... The reason pot is said to lead to other drugs....because when some fool gets questioned they always say,,,,well, first I started smoking pot....this is BS. I hit 50 next month and I have not gone on to harder drugs. My grandmother use to hit one every now and then (she was 80.)..said it was better than any heart medicine she'd ever taken. When I was younger I smoked pot occasionally. And yes, it can kill off some brain cells, I am living proof. But, it did not make me want to do other harder drugs. Its grown natural and has been on this earth a long imte. I am not defending its use, but have seen what it can do for people with cancer. It keeps the nausea down and aids in an appetite. It calms them and allows them to sleep peaceful. The THC pills are too expensive for most people. These patients quality of life is going down hill fast, and if allowing them legal medical pot can help them in their final days....I say so be it. And, for the record, if I am offered a hit and I feel like hitting, I'm a grown woman.......The Lord will judge me. I feel cigarettes and alcohol are far worse................ but then this is just MY OPINION!

The use of marijuana should be left up the the individual, for any reason. A person shouldn't have to be ill to have this option. As the previous poster pointed out, the gateway theory is crap. If you asked a pot smoker what they started with, the true answer would be alcohol or nicotine.
I suffer from liver cancer myself. The VA won't give me a transplant, because for a long time, I wouldn't stop smoking pot, and I smoke cigrettes as well. Imagine that, when I was in the Army, they used to give us a little pack of four cigarettes in our "C" rations. Pot helped me more than anything else with my pain, before Morphine. It improved my attitude as well. For a short while, I could forget that something foreign was living in my body. A monster, bent on the destruction of it's host. My cancer is my own fault. Both of my parents died of it, and I was informed that if I drank, with my Hepatitis C, I was running the risk of this cancer.
I had smoked pot for a long time when I got the news, so marijuana was nothing new to me. Now, however,"the evil weed" was giving me relief that I couldn't find by other means.
Now I've quit smoking pot, because of the guilt of the looks of disdain, that I saw in my doctors, and they have me on enough Morphine to kill most people.
How strange this is. I mustn't smoke maijuana, but it's OK to be a junkie.
They've now performed four Chemoembolizations. They cut the artery leading to the tumor. Seal the live end, and push a bunch of little beads soaked in chemo right up against the tumor, sealing that off. This last time, I was so sick for about six days, that I wondered if I would live. Each time , the tumor shrinks some, but they tell me that it's not a cure. They're just buying me time.
Today. I take my Morphine, and try to make the most of each day. When I start to feel sorry for myself, I think of all the fine young people who've died in wars. I think about all the terminally ill children, who've never had a chance to complete school, start families of their own, or even drive cars.
For alcohol and tobacco to be legal, and our prisons to be overflowing with marijuana users, is absurd.
The law even has pot in the same category as heroin.
Anyone who's seen the film,"Refer Madness" laughs at it. The sad thing is, that it was instrumental in passing the laws we still have against maijuana. I think that the film came out in something like 1937.
Had you told me thirty years ago that pot would still be illegal, I'd have said you were crazy. When I see these people post on here, in other forums, about the struggle that they're having quitting pot, it makes me crazy. They don't realize the harm they're doing. The fuel that they provide to those who would keep pot illegal, because of their own psycological weakness.
I can't afford to keep myself in pot anyway, so I simply quit. No sweat.

i truly think pot should be legal for medical reasons. if it wasnt for smoking a little bit of pot i would be sick as a dog every single day with this pegasys treatment. it helps me eat sleep alleviate pain. but its not legal in the state of PA where i live so i must always be careful. pot is such a natural substance that we could use the whole plant for other reasons beside smoking and helping with pain ect. we could use it for fuel, paper, so many other things can be done with that plant.