This reminds me or the joke where an economist refuses to look down when told that there’s a $20 bill on the ground: “if there was really $20 on the ground, someone would have picked it up already”.

Seriously though, we’re just getting started studying it, how can we know whether or not this stuff works? There’s a lot of positive anecdotal evidence. We’re not talking about marijuana, and no one ever expected it to solve every medical problem. That particular substance has done a lot of good with people experiencing discomfort, like cancer patients and the elderly, including members of my family.

Medical marijuana isn’t a cure, its a treatment. The point isn’t to make medical problems go away, it is reduce the adverse impact (more effectively and/or with less of its own adverse side effects than other alternatives.)

We do use it, and it does work, and “we” were using it for those problems even when it was illegal, a condition that didn't not occur as the outcome of a rational evaluation of scientific evidence of utility vs. harm on either recreational or medical use, but based on vibes (and, in no small part, racism.)

> how every medical problem hadn’t gone away in states that legalized marijuana.

The problem was that people were being locked up.