Yes I think it should be made legal but fat chance of that happening in America or Britain.

I think the governments just have the worst case scenario in mind (legalizing it and a good portion of the population becoming lazy stoners, among other inconclusive health issues). Not everyone's gonna smoke it if it's legal, and not every smoker will become lazy or crazy. It's the smoker's fault (albeit assisted by the weed) if they lose motivation or fuck up their perception and that's when it's time to take responsibility for themselves and cut it out (some will, some won't). It's the same with alcohol, people handle it in different ways, some use responsibly and some don't. I think the effects are much more drastic with alcohol though. Irresponsible drinkers just need to keep themselves away from it but that doesn't mean that by law, everyone else has to. I'm sure the amount of drunken hooligans driving recklessly, endangering themselves/others, losing friends etc would outweigh the amount of people affected negatively by weed.

My personal opinion, smoking weed recreationally is a much healthier hobby than a lot of things. Extreme sports are legal and people get killed participating, people get killed in all sorts of ways, that's life. If it's their personal choice to smoke weed then why not? And if it's legal then it 'kills the dealer' so to speak and regulations would benefit people in a lot of ways. We wouldn't get contaminated hash mixed with plastic and boot polish etc, and kids wouldn't be able to get hold of it so easily with the age restrictions (but they still would, I mean alcohol proves that).

I'd make the 1st paragraph a little less confusing but I don't have the time to go back and re-write it all. I will post again later though.