I'm an atheist and have smoked a lot of pot in my day, though I only use it twice a year or so now. I also have a doctorate and a full time job that puts me in the top 6% of incomes in the nation. Barring the idea that I'll go to hell for my beliefs, do I not have a bright future?
I know your super conservative ideology doesn't jive with the idea that someone can believe differently than you and maybe even use a drug or two and still be a valuable member of society, but saying that that is not true is ignoring reality. For every person whose life was "destroyed" by marijuana (though I'll be you don't think anyone's life was destroyed by a gun, guns don't kill people, people kill people, myabe it should be marijuana doesn't ruin lives, people with no self control or sense of responsibility ruin lives, right?), there are 1000 who use it without having their lives destroyed, probably 10,000.
In my hospital, we on average have about 15 alcoholics in at any given time being treated for cirrhosis or delirium tremens. The DT people stay in the hospital for days and have thousands of dollars of drugs pumped into them just to keep them from seizing, shaking, and their blood pressure going through the roof. The cirrhosis patients have a death sentence and, let me tell you, it can be a very rough way to go. We might get 5 people a year coming in to the ER for "marijuana overdose", which is simply a person smoking too much marijuana and having a panic attack. You know what we do for those people? Give them a Xanax and send them home once they stop thinking they are having a heart attack. That's not a side effect of marijuana so much as it is an effect of an underlying anxiety disorder being exacerbated by marijuana.
There is absolutely no question that, compared to alcohol, marijuana is relatively harmless, yet one can be bought in any gas station or grocery store next to the Hall Mark cards and the other will land you in jail. It's an injustice.
There is so much hypocrisy in the Ultra Conservative position in regards to freedom. You guys spout about freedom to own guns, freedom from taxation, freedom from government regulation, etc, but when you are faced with someone who is acting on that freedom in a way that you don't agree with, you get scared. The gays, the atheist, the people who use drugs responsibly, that's freedom. Freedom to pursue happiness, freedom to believe or not believe the way you want, and freedom over your own body. Why is their individual freedom to pursue the things that are important to them and hurting no one any less important than the individual freedoms that are important to you?