Coming from northern California in the heart of the 'Emerald Triangle' I live and breathe the good and bad of this. Anyone truly interested in this topic should really check out the book Smoke Signals. It goes over the historical medical, industrial and spiritual use of this wonderful plant. Like anything it has good and bad aspects. Where I live, everyone is involved and our communities thrive off it. The problem here is that there are massive unregulated industrial sized grows that can have a heavy environmental cost. People who do not know what they are doing with the land cause a lot of damage as the cartels will pollute our forests and leave trash, poisons, etc. Others will pull water from places that are already stressed and clearcut entire mountain tops to put up their greenhouses.
It can actually be very helpful medically, if you watch the documentary American Drug War 2: Cannabis Destiny you will see how under the microscope compounds in cannabis will literally attack cancer cells. This scratches the surface of what this plant can do, and to consider how our bodies have an endocannabinoid system we should all really take a hard look into this. However this does not come about by smoking it, rather ingesting oils extracted from the flowers. Being a long time user of it and have actually stopped smoking I can say that it can definitely have a negative affect, but not nearly as bad as alcohol. It's really all about moderation, yes it can help you focus and relax, you can think things through and have a much more open perspective towards things but at the same time it can cause panic attacks, make you lazy, etc. Healthwise of course it's not good to have smoke in your lungs, in places like India they smoke some very dirty cannabis that leads to lung infections and is probably just as bad as tobacco in that form.
My opinion is that it should be legal just like alcohol and tobacco, but the production of it is where we run into issues. I think it should be regulated like agriculture and adhere to certain environmental controls. I think the small farmer should be covered and production not only permitted to handful of producers. There is little negative effects on the environment when one works with the land and applies organic techniques such as using compost teas and natural management of pests and molds. The amount grown should be mostly regulated based on techniques as well as your water source, the size of your property, location, etc. It's currently a $4-10 billion a year industry and of course there would be benefits from taxation and permitting processes because our towns, cities, counties, states, and nation are bankrupt and operating in the red. Then there's also the prison industrial complex that thrives off this bogus drug war.
Unfortunately, big pharma would rather have you on opiates and other harmful drugs until they can isolate something from cannabis and patent it. It's not just about using the flowers for medicine or recreation though, we all know the US required citizens to grow hemp back in the day, and the UNLIMITED uses it has that would allow all of us as individuals to regain a sense of producing our own goods again, from clothes to building materials. This issue is bigger than most people think. When I drive down south I see mountains clearcut for vineyards, I see wine tasting places everywhere, and considering the potential for cannabis I think it is insane to keep this plant from expressing itself and helping us as a whole.
