Analgesics are "mind-altering chemicals" which offer the fantasy of being in less pain. Antidepressants regulate a chemical which the brain uses to control feelings and decision-making processes. When you go to sleep, that happened because of a chemical hormone known as melatonin, which triggers the process of lowering your body temperature, brain activity, and several other bodily functions. My brain has problems creating this hormone, as well as processing the mood-regulating chemicals serotonin and dopamine, so I appreciate that there is a natural substance that I can use to "alter my mind" and live a relatively normal life.

As a person with ADHD and hereditary heart disease, I hate that my prescription medication (an amphetamine / cocaine analogue, of all things) raises my heart rate and blood pressure. The anxiety from the possibility of a heart attack makes it so much worse that I can barely take my meds. Cannabis actually LOWERS blood pressure, and has the nice side effect of combating anxiety. There are serious medical applications for this stuff which may now be able to come to light now that it is not illegal to conduct scientific research on it. I do not appreciate sneering comments which imply that this substance has no purpose, and is only used by troublemaking wasters who should "just be themselves".

Good. Now make hemp completely legal. (Hemp comes from marijuana)

I predict that by year 2020 all of the free world will legalize marijuana. It is about time to admit that it is just a herb that helps many and harms noone.
I personally don't smoke it, but I will always support the right of others to do so.

fine by me, i believe it is a much better option than the pills they cant wait to cram down your throat. prohibition of this to begin with was for racists reasons.

Still staggering to me even an issue. Marijuana is roughly equivalent to tobacco and alcohol and we have those legal and learned making one illegal caused more issues. How many people sit in prison cells with lives ruined because of the nonsense of marijuana being illegal. All that will happen is lower prison population, increased tax revenue and some folks getting high.

With youth views on the issue in a generation it will be legal nationwide.

Well thats just one of the reasons,   The whole prohibition of it came from a number of reasons.  another was the industrial threat hemp posed to cotton.  Race came into play because it was popular with minority groups, and it was used in a way to spread the fear associated with it in the general public, aswell as people seeing it as a way to put down the minorities.   Part of this was creating the name marijuana.