More research is available on cannabis than many FDA-approved drugs

[RainDog]

8. However, I have often sought to alleviate ignorance

So allow me to share with you some of those who claim they benefitted from cannabis use

Louis Armstrong - inventor the the jazz solo
Hoagy Carmichael - who wrote the most recorded song in the American songbook, "Stardust Melodies"

...both mention their use of cannabis early in their musical careers - and after...plus tons of other musicians who use cannabis and find its ability to heighten sensitivity to music is a positive for their profession - this includes musicians from every genre - which you can seek out for yourself if you want to have a clue about the reality of who uses cannabis.

Carl Sagan noted this as well, when he said:

"The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before," he wrote. "The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse."

He also said:

I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of gaussian distribution curves. It was a point obvious in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end of about an hour of extremely hard work I found I had written eleven short essays on a wide range of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics. Because of problems of space, I can’t go into the details of these essays, but from all external signs, such as public reactions and expert commentary, they seem to contain valid insights. I have used them in university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books.

iow, he created original work that he acknowledges came about by the benefit of cannabis use.

http://marijuana-uses.com/mr-x/

Margaret Mead - one of the most famous cultural anthropologists in American history. She also gave testimony in favor of decriminalization before federal officials.
Francis Crick - who discovered the structure of the double helix with Watson (actually, Crick credits LSD with the actual visualization of the structure of DNA.)

Ralph Abraham - Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, since 1968. He has written over a dozen books and is an editor for the International Journal of Bifurcations and Chaos. Abraham is an acknowledged leader in the emerging field of "dynamical systems theory," also called "chaos math." - Who also talks about the benefits of LSD, fwiw.
Richard Feynman - physicist (He writes about this in his biography Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman. (Also LSD)

Kary Mullis - 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry. In his biography he states: "I think I might have been stupid in some respects, it if weren't for my psychedelic experiences." He is, as you will note, YET ANOTHER AWARD WINNING, PATH BREAKING SCIENTIST who also thinks LSD has useful purposes for scientists.
Oliver Sacks - neurologist and popular science writer. He notes his marijuana use in his book, An Anthropologist on Mars (Sacks also has no problems with LSD usage within set/setting.)

Michael Pollan - UC Berkeley Prof. and one of the most highly regarded popular science writers working today. (His sister is married to Michael J. Fox, famous for MS - and, yes, MS responds well to cannabis to relieve spasticity.
Susan Blackmore - psychologist and mathematician and author of many articles and papers, and the book, The Meme Machine (and she has also appeared on camera smoking marijuana in a documentary about the same.)

Stephen J. Gould - scientist/writer who also wrote about marijuana here: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_marijuana.html Gould used marijuana medically, as an adjunct to cancer treatment - he claims it saved his life. During that time of his marijuana use (which he feared would blur his brain), he wrote The Structure of Evolutionary Theory - all 1400 pages.
Robert Hooke - friend of Newton who publicized the value of marijuana at a Royal Society meeting in the 1600s.

Steve Jobs (he also credits LSD for the design of Apple.)
Richard Branson - founder of Virgin Records, etc. one of the richest men in the world who is starting up a space shuttle tourism venture, last I heard.

Barbara Ehrenreich (biologist and feminist writer)

Rick Steves - travel writer and PBS tourism guy
Richard Burton - considered one of the finest linguists ever, he translated texts from Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and more - he had mastered 29 languages. He wrote about his cannabis usage in Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah

Aaron Sorkin (writer/producer - actually, marijuana use is so common among those working in creative industries it would take pages to list them all - and that's just the ones who publicly discuss it.

Not to mention all the Democratic officials who have admitted to use earlier in life - that would include the President - who, as far as I can tell, wasn't harmed - but the law could've harmed him if he had been arrested. The Clintons, The Gores, etc.. iow, just about anyone who has been alive since the 1960s and attended college... on both sides of the aisle.

The point, however, is that it is the USER, not the use, that determines the value of marijuana for themselves or their work. If someone isn't a scientist, getting high won't make them one - but getting high won't prevent them from becoming one, either.

These are only a few examples - and only those who choose to publicly talk about this issue.

I'm sick of the stoner stereotype - it's just a right wing lie. I don't expect to see it posted on a liberal site with the consistency that it is, frankly.