Ultimately there is a clear difference between the medical use of a drug, the banning of which is both harming patients and is against the wishes of many societies and allowing a free-for-all. As a society we regulate the use of other products to ensure that they are not available to minors or open to abuse.  Clearly there would need to be regulations and, equally clearly, sometime those regulations would fail. However, that is true of all regulated product and the blanket ban isn’t producing terribly impressive results at the moment.  There is compelling evidence of the palliative effects of cannabis as well as popular support for its medicinal use; good policy should not be bound by a reactionary response to the simple mention of the word. There are side-effects to the use of almost any drug but they are relatively benign in this instance compared to many alternatives.