Originally Posted by antikoala
I have to disagree with you on that one. Actually, it's not just about the benefits of Medical Marijuana themselves, which are alone significant (in my opinion extremely).
I see the main side gain from fully legalizing Medical Marijuana as putting society on a track which inevitably leads to ending the demonization of the plant once and for all. Imagine the number of people who will be lawfully eligible to use it and society's reaction when realizing in full that sick people next door not only lack the dreadful consequences described by the wagers of the Drug War, on the contrary many of them have enhanced quality of life at best (or tend to smile a lot more at worst :) ).
This will cause an avalanche of voices being raised, this time shielded from public mockery and social condemnation by a vastness of medical cases, and access to empirical evidence from frequent users will be available to the wide public at last, this time not by the "resenting" figure of the "neighborhood pothead" but by grandma Claire and Sam the retired postman
"A small joint for a man, a giant high for mankind" :)
(p.s. Marinol contains synthetic THC -which has numerous differences than the actual chemical found in nature- and none of the other active ingredients,many of which play a significant part in the plant's therapeutic abilities)