Should marijuana be legal?

As a recovering addict, I'll point out that many addictive drugs, though not marijuana to my knowledge, do directly harm the body and mind to the point where a person becomes unable to maintain their own life and well being through honest work in combination to their addiction. Regardless of their drug of choice, addicts will feed their addiction first, regardless of the harm it does to their well being and finances. Because of this, they will often resort to theft and other crime in order to keep feeding their addiction, and cease to operate as a rational human being.

That said, just throwing these addicts in prison is a horrible idea as well. It has no practical positive effect and exposes lesser criminals to more "hardened" ones. I'm familiar with an effective enforced rehabilitation program that included regular and random testing, therapy, and limited jail time (up to maybe a couple of weeks).

I agree that the war on drugs has been a complete failure, and I'm usually opposed to government getting involved where it doesn't need to be, but some drugs are a threat to non-users as much as users, and addiction is extremely difficult to break, even for a person who wants to break it, without some level of force being available to provide an appropriate positive punishment.

But Marijuana? Yeah, trying to prevent use by adults of right mind just simply isn't worth the damage done in enforcing the prohibition.