A bit of a late reply but, antipsychotics and antidepressants treat mental illness; before the first psychiatric medicine was synthesized in the 1950s (chloropromazine) patients with virtually all mental illnesses were locked in mental asylums, sent to get exorcised by a priest or some other pseudoscientific treatment like hydrotherapy or insulin shock therapy. When the antipsychotics were first synthesized, they were hailed as miracle drugs, because patients doomed to live an entire life in an asylum experienced remission of symptoms , and were able to reintegrate into society, and begin living on welfare or with their families. Now around 4/5 of patients with schizophrenia can return to society, and rehospitilizations usually only occur because they forget to (or don't want to) take their drugs. Same deal with antidepressants and mood stabliziers (usually prescribed for bipolar disorder, and occasionally treatment resistant depression). And they're still working on newer psychiatric medication, with fewer side effects; I won't go into specifics, but they help people experience remissions because they alter neurotransmitter levels back to normal; but also alter neurotransmitter levels in other neurotransmitter systems, which is an unintended consequence. In fact, there was a recent study of high functioning patients with schizophrenia (who are doctors,professors, lawyers and CEOs) and all of them thanked the antipsychotics and medical treatment from psychiatrists for their recoveries, and prevent them from not achieving their goals. In fact, if this were 1940s; instead of holding elite professional jobs; they would have been locked up in an asylum for the rest of their lives. Weed, in contrast, is known to worsen, and trigger mental disorders in people who are genetically susceptible to mental illness. Antipsychotics and antidepressants and other forms of psychiatric medications help give these people a second chance at life; don't compare weed to FDA approved medicine; which takes years of synthesis by elite scientists, and years of human trials to study its effectiveness by elite doctors. And not valid in the formal setting is because of lack of research, in a lab or a hospital clinical trial. Scientists are allowed to inject drugs like weed, and develop medicines based off of it, as long as they have approval from the NIH, FDA, etc. ANYWHERE in the country. Doesn't have to be in a place with legal weed to do these studies......

As a treatment for mental illness i think there needs to be more studies but the current research sends to be against using this as a treatment for mental illness. However it does have it's uses in pain management. You wouldn't prescribe Advil to a patient to treat their schizophrenia so why would you prescribe pot? It is not the answer for everything and just because you don't feel that it is making you wise doesn't mean it is helping you get better.

"No medication approved by the FDA is smoked. Marijuana that is dispensed under a state-authorized program is not a specific product with controlled dosages. The buyer has no way of knowing the strength or purity of the product, as cannabis lacks the quality control of FDA-approved medicines." Herbal marijuana in plant form isn't a good form of medicine; just like heroine isn't medicine; heroin derived medicine is appropriate. You can't standardize smoked marijuana; hence why virtually all legitimate medicine is in injection, pill, nasal spray or inhaler form; so it can be standardized. Also, at this point, for its uses in pain, most of the research is anecdotal. Hence why, in a recent release by the president of the Canadian Medical Association, most doctors don't prescribe medical marijuana because of controversy, most don't prescribe it because lack of proper scientific evidence to justify its use. Hence why doctors are against medical marijuana legalization as well; it isn't proper medicine in plant form. Just like there is opiod or cocaine derived medicine; they are starting to create cannabanoid derived medicine.

I live in Canada where it is decriminalized. This is the sand point i made to another poster that you cannot control the dosage of smoked marijuana because the potency of the product will vary by crop and season.

Cannabanoid derived medication, however, can be standardized for potency. I live in Canada as well. My dad's a high school principal, over the years, he's seen hundreds upon hundreds of his students get caught smoking weed and (unless these students were committing another crime, like having weed found on them when they were trying to steal a car) all they get is a warning, and sometimes a detention (or as the cops tell my dad, I think you can handle these kids on your own), so the punishments are rarely more severe than if these people were caught with tobacco or alcohol. Funny thing is that technically, weed's not decriminalized. A police officer down below told me that some police organization that oversees how drug possession and youth are handled takes "leniency" upon weed; even though it is treated as decriminalized, it is technically not. In 2005, the Liberals in Parliament drafted a bill to officially decriminalize weed, but that was when the weed and mental illness came out,so the Canadian Medical Association got it dropped. But I wonder what's going to happen if Justin Trudeau wins, and legalizes it. I don't really care about legalization, as long as people, especially teenagers know [url=http://www.mentalhealthcare.org.uk/view_all_videos/professor_robin_murray_video_3]that[/url] [url=http://www.mentalhealthcare.org.uk/view_all_videos/robin_murray_video_clip_1]weed[/url] can trigger mental illness. But, I wish Jack Layton was still around; I think he's a better candidate for Prime Minister than Harper, Trudeau, or Mulclair.

If Jack Layton were still Aaron's i think he would have been our next pm. I miss him in politics. I take a more liberalist approach to the legalize it argument. Whatever a consenting adult wants to do in the privacy if their home us their business. The only problem with this is that our healthcare system would pay for their treatment of related illnesses. I would prefer if mind altering drugs and the likes were kept out if the hands of youths.