I don't disagree with it; I just think it's suspicious that people are publicly acknowledging that now rather than at any other time.

That said, marijuana is certainly less benign than you're making it out to be. I know several people who started using marijuana in high school and became interested in basically nothing else. Anything can become addictive, but biological components that have tolerance factors are especially effective because they cause you to increase your dosage over time.

It's not like doctors in the 60's thought that marijuana was actually lethal, though. The propaganda about marijuana has been divorced from truth basically the whole time, but it's been scheduled anyway.

I find it hard to believe that this is simply a miracle story of the long work of activists finally paying off. There are no free lunches. If we're getting legal marijuana, we're losing something else. So what is that?

Well, what else are we losing?