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Let's compare it to alcohol, shall we?
Alcohol is, as I've heard, technically speaking a hard drug. It's physically as well as mentally addictive, and in the long run, when consumed in too large quantities, it has devastating effects on both the body and the mind. Yet lots of people drink it on a regular basis, in moderation, keeping the harmful effects to a minimum. It is in our Western civilization a socially accepted drug, it has been a part of our culture for as long as we can remember. So we are used to alcohol, we know how to handle it (at least most of us do), and we can get it without coming into contact with shady drug dealers that try to get us hooked on other stuff for their own $$.
Weed, or marihuana, pot or whatever you want to call it, is only mentally addictive. Most of the harmful effects on the body from smoking it comes from the tobacco in a joint, not the actual weed. The effects of a long-time habit are only mentally, problems with concentrating the mind on something and the like. But there is somewhat of a taboo on it, resulting in the fact that people who use marihuana excessively mostly aren't helped as they should. Plus the illegality leads to a criminal scene around it, with as a result that people who use it have to rely on those shady dealers mentioned earlier.
At least this is the problem as I see it.
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