Alright, I'm getting rather sick and tired of the stigmas attatched to people who smoke marijuana. No, I'm not going to go off on a tirade of how it should be legalized. My thoughts on that matter have already been expressed by millions of other people, there's no use flogging a dead horse... but the way many people treat us, like we're stupid, inferior drug addicts. I, for one, self medicate. I hear voices, get panic attacks, hallucinate and have anger management issues. I have been seeing various pyschiatrists since I was in grade school (I am now 23 years old) and none of their techniques or perscriptions have worked even remotely as well as marijuana has. It is the catch all, end all cure for me. Additionally, I am interested in the counterculture, the 'hippy' lifestyle. Not that I wear tie-dye, flip flops and save the rainforest, but I am deeply rooted in the culture of marijuana. I use it very frequently and though I feel as though I am clearly an intelligent, levelheaded person, I have met a flabbergasting amount of people who, when they discover I smoke weed, suddenly view me as a degenerate retard with a drug problem. I pay my bills, I finished school, I maintain a regular paycheque, I tend to my pets, keep my house clean, work to advance my mind and treat my fellow men and women with respect and kindness. In turn, many many people show me no respect whatsoever, soley because of a little plant I like smoking? Where's the stigma around drunks. So many of them kill (driving) or beat their kids like my pops did Or smokers and their second hand smoke slowly killing everyone around them? And don't start off on how weed is worse than cigarettes. Do some searching at thewashingtonpost.com and there was recently an article posted that said that even in heavy consumption, 44,000 joints per year, there was no increased risk of lung cancer and that THC and the other essential cannabanoids actually appear to reduce the carcinogenic potential of marijuana smoke. Not that I submit non-smokers to my second hand weedsmoke, I've got more respect than that. I keep it to myself. I'm a functional 'stoner' and yet there are still so many out there who'd take that one aspect of me and my lifestyle and choose to base their entire perception of me as a person on that one thing. This needs to stop.