I think you are being too hard on the defensiveness of weed advocates. Can't you understand where it comes from?

For decades cannabis has been demonised and subject to the most extreme misinformation and propaganda campaigns, and there is now an accepted view of cannabis that does not tally with reality, and users of cannabis constantly find themselves coming across this view and having to content with it.

You need to remember that fewer than 10% of regular users develop a dependency problem with cannabis, which probably puts it on par with chocolate, or coffee. And its negative physical health effects ARE minimal - I don't think it has ever caused a stroke. Cannabis has been implicated in many deaths because it was in the system of the deceased at the time of death, but that's very far away from a causal relationship. It may bring a stroke or a heart attack that was going to happen anyway forward, but so could walking up a flight of stairs, having a double express or getting out of a chair too fast. Just because the doctor writes it on the death certificate doesn't make it true, and even if it was true in those cases, you're talking about a few tens of cases worldwide.

Most people drink alcohol (where I'm from, at least) , so in some sense it IS the default state, and you don't need to be an alcoholic to develop alcohol related health issues - there is no "safe" level of alcohol. Sure, it'd be silly to justify using cannabis simply because it's not as bad as alcohol, but I don't think anyone every makes that point - I think the point they're making is usually that judgment of cannabis use is unfounded and hypocritical of the same standards are not applied to legal, more harmful and more ubiquitous substances.

Yes, there is a danger that we become so defensive that we refuse to acknowledge that it can cause problems for people in certain circumstances, but that's