Wow, I think you successfully rolled detraction, equivocation, and ad hominem all into one, what a dubious accomplishment.
For one, not only smokers think cannabis should be legal. A majority of Americans (forget the actual number) support legalization. If it were 51% (and I'm sure it's more than that), that would make 153,000,000 supporters, there are only 14.5 million habitual cannabis smokers in America. Two, how do you define a smoker? There are plenty of people who have smoked at one point and stopped, in fact the vast majority of America has tried cannabis at one point or another. Are their opinions all invalidated by your blanket statement? If you want good reasons, though, here are a few:
Cannabis criminalization is a red herring to hide the true purpose, hemp criminalization. It is not legal to produce hemp in the U.S. and it is difficult to import. Were it able to be freely produced it could be a cheap alternative used in the production of a plethora of materials including: paper, synthetics, construction materials, clothes, and fuel.
Many smokers use it for medicinal purposes, it is far less harmful than many drugs prescribed for depression, eating disorders, minor circulatory afflictions, and chronic pain. In fact, chemo patients often have to take a whole regiment of drugs to offset the effects of each other.
It is non-habit forming and far less harmful than either of our two most popular drugs, alcohol and tobacco. In fact, a habitual coffee drinker is more likely to be in ill health than a habitual cannabis smoker.
Criminalization inherently contributes to many of the ill effects associated with the drug. It's called a gateway drug, but that penomena is due far more to the fact that those who sell it make less money on it than the other illegal narcotics they sell. It's an illegal dealer's job to sell high end drugs, pot is just a hook. It's like the complementary drinks a casino might give out to people who spend enough time gambling. If you legalize it and let authorized dealers sell it, it will become no more of a gateway drug than tobacco or alcohol. It also greatly reduces the risk of it being sold to children and closes the industry off from drug cartels who run it illegally from Mexico. Finally, as every prohibition throughout history has taught us, you never completely wipe out a drug, people who want to use it will. Why have people buying a relatively safe drug from illegal dealers who might sell to very young adolescents, try to push harder drugs, and buy from violent cartels instead of letting American farmers grow it and local vendors sell it?
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