system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Marijuana.

I have grown up all my life surrounded by massive propaganda campaigns against the use of marijuana, all of them asserting its dangerously harmful effects and how it's a detriment to society. As such, I always perceived marijuana-usage to be largely taboo, something only done in a civilization by the very lowest of the low.
Now that I am nearly done with high school, I've found that not only is it not taboo, it's actually very common and even (apparently) misinterpreted by the moralistic media and harshly oppressed by the law. What I want to know is simple: scientifically, if marijuana is as beneficial and safe as many of my peers claim it to be, then how did this massive war on pot come to be? I also want to know both the flaws of and the arguments for both sides of the cannabis-legalization debate. What are the potential effects, both good and bad, of the use of marijuana? A non-biased reply is preferable.
gpt
"Marijuana" is a special word for the common hemp plant, or cannabis — which is a plant that has been used for thousands of years for a lot of different things; such as rope, fabric, paper, oil, and drugs. The word "marijuana" or "marihuana" used to be a rare slang expression, but government people in the early 20th century started using it a lot in order to make hemp sound more foreign, and to make it sound scary to people who didn't like foreign things.

When people smoke or eat the buds or resin of the hemp plant, it does a bunch of different things to them. The most obvious is that it usually makes people feel good. Depending on the kind of hemp and the person doing it, it can make people feel happy, excited, relaxed, and a bit dizzy. It can make music sound prettier, make colors seem brighter, and make silly things funnier.

On the other hand, it can also sometimes make people scared or overwhelmed and unhappy. And other people think it makes them lazy or boring. People are different, and while some people like the effects of cannabis a lot, others don't. That's normal — just as some people really like the taste of olives or broccoli or red wine or blue cheese, and others really dislike them.

Hemp does other things, too. One is that it usually makes people a little bit hungry — you might have heard of this as "the munchies". This same effect helps keep people from throwing up if they are sick. This is why many people with AIDS or cancer use cannabis — because the medicines they take for AIDS or cancer are very powerful and make them throw up, but the hemp helps stop that.

Why does cannabis make people feel relaxed and happy? It affects certain parts of the brain, which are involved in feeling emotions, pain, and other sensations. It does this in a way which — for some people — can cancel out depression and certain kinds of chronic pain. This is another reason people take cannabis as medicine.

But people also often use cannabis just because it is pleasant and fun — just as people play games, or watch TV, or do other hobbies, or use other drugs like beer or coffee, just because they like to do so. A lot of people believe that there is nothing wrong with doing things just for fun, so long as nobody else is getting hurt. (It wouldn't be okay for a parent to just play games *all day* and neglect their kids — but that doesn't mean it's bad to play games *once in a while*.)

On the other hand, sometimes people use cannabis too much. It's not very common — it's actually a lot *less* common than people drinking alcohol too much. But because smoking hemp is pleasant and relaxing, people can get used to doing it a lot. This can make it harder for them to do other things with their life. The fact that cannabis is against the law makes it even harder, though — because they have to hide what they are doing, which makes it harder to change.

Today, cannabis is against the law almost everywhere. This means that when the police find out that someone is doing it, they come around and arrest people and take them away to jail. They often take away their car and house too. And if they have kids, those kids might have to grow up without their parent around to take care of them. This is really sad! Many people think that *even if* cannabis is bad for people, it's not as bad as what the government does to people who use it today. *Even if* you think that using cannabis is a bad idea, that it makes people goofy and silly and lazy, you might agree that this isn't as bad as dragging those people away to jail.