Quote 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)
Thats a creative way of thinking, but I regret to inform you that things would never realistically turn out that way. Medical Marijuana won't change any viewpoints on the drug, because none of us are going to be taking it for its questionable medical benefits.. we're all going to take it to get high, the same way we've always been doing it. People aren't against any health factors/risks of Marijuana, they are against the lifestyle it provokes and effects, so the fact that it has medical benefits that do not apply to us in any way, will not change a thing..

Medical Marijuana is nothing but a loophole activists, (or just about any pot smoker for that matter it seems) is banking on, in hopes that weed is legalized/decriminalized, and the government already knows this. I'm not against medicinal marijuana, but its time to face the facts and stop clinging to a false hope. The DEA's website themselves state the following:

Any determination of a drug's valid medical use must be based on the best available science undertaken by medical professionals. The Institute of Medicine conducted a comprehensive study in 1999 to assess the potential health benefits of marijuana and its constituent cannabinoids. The study concluded that smoking marijuana is not recommended for the treatment of any disease condition. In addition, there are more effective medications currently available. For those reasons, the Institute of Medicine concluded that there is little future in smoked marijuana as a medically approved medication.
Straight from the DEA website, and that bolded part is bolded from their website, thats not something I am trying to emphasize, thats them..
http://www.dea.gov/ongoing/marijuana.html

The government has made it clear that Medicinal Marijuana will not be a solution. See, my point about Marinol was not to discuss its effectiveness, or compare it to marijuana effects, but rather to prove a point that the government has the active ingredient in Marijuana, synthetically produced it in pill form, and they are using it in their defense.