(To be clear, they're all drugs, and they should all be used responsibly if at all.)

it's easy to just look at the upside of something that doesn't hurt you and you just have an extra choice, but knowing that it can and does wreck the lives of many, I feel that it's a painful thing for me to vote for, or against

We've seen from the gambling legalization, drug legalization, and even things like loot boxes, etc, that there is a subset of the population who just cannot handle these things at a level most people would consider "responsible". We last had this nation-wide conversation around drinking, and prohibition had its problems, but we're going to have to support this group somehow, or let them be exploited by advanced companies as if they're subhuman.

In the better case, they just become insufferable and pseudo-intellectual because they started watching Alan Watts and Carl Sagan while stoned and would become convinced that they know everything about physics and philosophy.

In a lot of cases though, and this is more obvious in hindsight, it feels like they were using weed as a means of dealing with the fact that they were deeply unhappy and depressed people. Instead of confronting their problems and seeing a therapist/psychiatrist or any of the other things that they could do to actively improve their life, they would spend their evenings and weekends getting high.

I don't inherently have an issue with people using recreational drugs; I've gotten drunk before [1], but it should be done in moderation.

[1] I never did it that much and I haven't had anything to drink at all in years.

A few years ago I was prescribed medical cannabis to treat chronic pain, and aside from being great for pain - wow, it's changed my life!

The right cannabis strains can do wonders for my mood, but it also makes me feel... less autistic, for want of a better way of putting it; suddenly I can understand why somebody said something, or how something I said could be taken the wrong way. For the first time in my life, I can really try to see things from someone else's perspective, and I'm thinking about other people far more than I ever have - I feel empathic.

Over time, cannabis has also allowed me to analyse and think on the past, which, has greatly helped me. For the first time in my life, I would no longer describe myself as having depression (it may come back if I stopped cannabis treatment, so maybe I should say I'm in remission).

Cannabis use may of course pose some risks for a small percentage of the population, but I'd wager it's in general far less dangerous than alcohol. And of course, my experience will not be universal.

As always, it depends. While I agree wrt marijuana, everyone would be an opiate addict if poppy wasn't regulated - it's just that good.

There should be some exceptions, like banning invasive species, but in general, you're absolutely right.

Can we move on to more important and substantive topics? Something something files.

The spiteful killing of so much research funding alone dwarfs all of their minor wins. Wrecking clean energy projects are total self sabotage for the country. The utter lack of pollution enforcement will cause untold cases of cancer and other disease in Americans. Trump's family has stolen billions for themselves while destroying hundreds of billions of dollars in value with this idiotic Iran war they can't even articulate a plan or theory of victory for.

This is far from an exhaustive list. Trump is good at making minor high profile moves seem like a big deal, but it can really distract from the orders of magnitude worse decisions he's making elsewhere.