Wednesday the 28th of October, 2009
While California and other States are experiencing a surge in Medical Marijuana Dispensaries, the rest of us have to take our chances. With regulation and re-scheduling of the medicinal plant, there will be a lot less money received by the illegal trade. 
When there is a national identification card, for use everywhere in the country by a registered patient for obtaining their legal medicine we can expect far less crime around Cannabis in particular.
The subtle difference between being legally ill or just wanting a prescription will test the Doctors credibility, who prescribe Cannabis to patients that would normally take pharmaceutical drugs. 
Chronically ill patients have difficulty growing any amount and will need designated growers to supply their needs.
Police will protect the stash of the bedridden and maintain the conflicting State and Federal laws simultaneously. I don't think so.
Medical Marijuana is a step on the way to full legalization and then marijuana will be just another flavour of beer. Industrial hemp will have to be legalized along with the recreational variety. You can't be half pregnant. 
Under prohibition their is no quality control and no dealer has to follow any rules. Drug dealers sell what ever they want, tax free. The money wasted trying to enforce the law, now measured in billions per year, has only seen the prison population explode and further eroded any faith in the justice system by the millions of victims of the so called crime of consuming Cannabis. 
The punishment in some parts of the world is definitely more harmful than what the substance can do to the mind or body.
The money needed to compensate the victims of prohibition, the people incarcerated for their victimless crime, will run into countless millions of dollars. Much less money than trying to win a war on a weed.
