Medicinal useful enough to be legalized

My dad is a psychiatrist. He is 54 years old. And he believes in the legalization of marijuana.\nIf you saw him, you'd never believe it. He sports the gray-turning-white beard, and every time I do anything, he is quick to remind me why, psychologically, I must have done it. But the man, a lifelong Presbyterian and elder, believes marijuana should be legal. He doesn't smoke it, but he sure doesn't knock it. \nI, on the other hand, have never been a weed kind of girl. Never thought it should be illegal, just never really cared. Growing up in the Bible Belt, I did my fair share of breaking the law but never felt the need to be a proponent of it … until my grandmother's recent battle with cancer. Her struggle and the knowledge that marijuana, if legal, might have helped her makes the fight for the legalization of marijuana like a mission for me.\nMy dad's argument has always been that the long-term effects of marijuana are similar to those of alcohol: not the best, but not deadly. There are plenty of addictions, from cigarettes to caffeine. I even know someone who is addicted to snorting Ritalin. Marijuana is just another such addiction. \nAccording to sources ranging from Consumer Reports to CNN to NBC to the New York Times, marijuana provides relief of the extreme nausea cancer patients going through chemotherapy experience. Patients leaving chemotherapy treatment normally vomit for eight to 10 hours continuously. Smoking marijuana eases all of this nausea, giving patients a normal appetite and letting them resume their normal lives.\nMarijuana has been proven to help with AIDS "wasting syndrome," the loss of appetite and extreme weight loss that afflicts many AIDS victims toward the end of their battle with the disease. This wasting is deadly and Marinol, the "pill form" of marijuana, is one of the only approved treatments for the syndrome. But AIDS patients complain even Marinol does not ease their pain like marijuana does. While Marinol leaves patients groggy, marijuana lets people reclaim their appetite and prevents much of the normally significant weight loss, according to CNN.com.\nAlthough researchers seem to have lost interest in the use of marijuana to treat glaucoma, the disease that initially highlighted marijuana as a treatment, marijuana has been found to be helpful to people with spinal cord injuries and multiple sclerosis. Marijuana helps with spacity, the painful muscle spasms and tremors that plague victims of these conditions, according to the New York Times.\nSure, with the legalization of any body-inhibiting drug there is the strong possibility of a few years of chaos. Marijuana could and probably would be abused like any other legal drug, like alcohol or cigarettes. But then, when the initial desire subsides and it becomes as common as a Marlboro Light, marijuana would most likely become just another product you can only buy if you are over the age of 21.\nWhat is perhaps the most frustrating thing about keeping drugs illegal is that the access to the drugs still exists. On any given day, if I wanted to smoke weed, I could smoke it -- legal or not. My dad has readily admitted that even he, far past his partying college years, could probably find access somewhere without looking very hard. \nSo, what does the "war on drugs" really do? Very little, I think. Drugs are still smuggled over the border, and freshmen in high school still think they are rebels if they toke it up. Potheads are still potheads. \nThe commercials with the psycho girl breaking stuff or the egg frying in the pan screaming "This is your brain on drugs" or David Schwimmer from "Friends" telling people to "Just Say No" don't seem to have done much of anything. Tobacco use is at an all-time high for 20-somethings, and marijuana use continues to rise with every hit from the bong.\nI don't expect to ever live for the days when lighting it up in a hash bar "Pulp Fiction"-style is the norm. I have far too many agendas and far too little time. \nBut I do have hope, and for this battle, hope is all I need.