Czuch:

> I dont personally believe that pot is a "soft" drug

I think by "soft" people would mean a drug that does not cause aggresive or euphoric behaviour, hallucinations or total sedation. Marihuana is a sedative and because of that people who smoke it "mellow out". It has side effects, like all drugs. Anybody who thinks it is healthy to smoke marihuana is stupid. There is nothing healthy about any drug.

I think the inhaler was developed to keep THC as a controlled substance. An inhaler would deliver 9-delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (9-d-THC) which is one of over 400 compounds found in marihuana. Pharmaceutical companies can make a lot of money out this.

As a chemist, I can say that I have mixed feelings about the current state of the law. On the one side, it breaks my heart to see people go to jail for drug offenses. On the other side I know how harmful these things are and whether strict control or deregulation is better depends on who is compiling statistics. Statistics on deregulation and crime incidence are not always reliable.

I do find interesting that the powerful tobacco and alcohol lobbies have kept tobacco and alcohol as legal drugs. The US had prohibition and it led to alcohol smuggling and organized crime in the 1920s. Canada tried to decrease tobacco consumption by steeply raising the "sin" tax on tobacco. It led to cigarrette smugling from the US and a rise in the tobacco black market in the 1990s. If tobacco and alcohol are a measure of what happens when drugs are legal, then high "sin" taxes and public education on drug consumption might seem the way to go with some of the less harmful drugs.

Some drugs are so mild that people don't even see them as drugs. For example, caffeine. It would be funny if Starbucks went out of business because caffeine suddenly became illegal!