My thought on the irrational hatred and fear of pot is that those folks are mostly older and were subject to the gov’t propaganda back in the day.
They never heard of a conflicting viewpoint on pot, only the party line.
So prevalent was this propaganda that these folks abandon their critical thinking and just go with the flow.
To analyze the subtleties between addictive hard drugs and pot is just too hard. They fall back on what they know, and what they know is (in Phil Hartman’s Caveman Lawyer voice) “Drugs bad!”.
I agree. These people were brainwashed during the height of the War on Drugs era.
I was too. But I figured out the truth decades ago and it’s maddening to see people still “stuck on stupid” when it comes to drugs.
Even more so when you figure that a lot of these people have a medicine cabinet full of drugs and actually do more drugs than the people they are condemning!