What's wrong with both, if it makes you feel better, manages anything like stress, anxiety, pain, whatever, there are benefits and whether you call it recreational use or meds is irrelevant. While I would agree that some will take advantage of it for "recreational use" and will jump on the "medical" bandwagon, the majority benefit from it, call it what you will, it's beneficial.
I smoked for recreational use and never really thought about using it for medical purposes, then I got cancer. It helped in so many ways it's difficult to remember them all, but I'll try, this is from personal experience, not some study or report:
Chemo/radiation: apetite, nausea, anxiety (none), depression (none), pain - I don't know if it removed the pain BUT it allowed me to forget about it or at least some reprieve by taking my mind off it, this was probably the biggest physical benefit, medical? I don't know but it doesn't matter, it helped. The next and most important benefit was keeping me off pharma drugs. While my doctors would readily and sometimes push pharma drugs to offset all the side-effects of both chemo and radiation, I was able to stay off all potentially addictive pharma drugs (oxy's and the like) and refused to take them. Some I had to take (part of making the chemo more effective, so part of the treatment) short-term immediately after chemo (3-5 days) like one called Prednisone - OMFG, this stuff was horrible, they had me on 100mg daily, twice a day, it would keep me up 20 hours/day, anxiety, emotional mood swings, never mind the sleep issue, I'd smoke concentrated oil, so strong that I couldn't smoke it otherwise or I'd pass out, and this would barely allow me to sleep a few hours a night. After the first few treatments I developed brutal sciatic nerve pain in one leg. I believe it was mainly from not exercising (physical fatigue) as much as I would normally and sitting for long periods of time. Again, I turned down all the pharma crap and suffered but with some relief by "medicating" regularly. Not removing the pain but allowing me to put it aside for long enough periods and literally at times keeping me from crying due to the pain.
So call it what you will, question some people's motives, but please don't minimize or trash the benefits for medical use, as far as I'm concerned, it literally saved my life and kept me from getting hooked on much more powerful and "legal" pharma shit
f'n hypocrites
I recommend and trumpet it for anyone suffering from any sort of mental or physical pain. Even got my ex mother in-law using it when she was going through breast cancer treatments, the biggest hurdle was getting her to accept it as option to the pharma crap. The stigma associated with this wonder drug, only because governments don't have the balls to legalize it, is the worst form of hypocrisy there is. I had never had much experience with pharma drugs until I went through my cancer battle. Nothing (illegal) that I've ever taken (I was a teen in late 60's/early 70's - nuff said) compares to some of the shit they gave me during treatment, yet all of those drugs are "legal" and marijuana is the "evil" gateway drug??? Please
$#@!
