Quote Originally Posted by snowballz
well it was until the turn of the century.
I heard several stories that stated that caused it to become illegal.
1----One story is that due to the mexicans coming to America,with their tequllia and pot,in the 20's,30's the rich began to complain about them being loud disruptive,partied alot so they banned together to have the politicians and law to look into the troubles they began having with their farm hands,what they pointed out to them acting loud and crazy was the pot,not the booze they drank..
2----another story was that during the 20's-30's paper farmers,,saw hemp as a threat to their cash crops,(trees) since 1 acre of hemp could be the same as 4 acres of trees,and hemp could be harvested 2xs a year thats 8x's the amount of hemp vs trees,paper etc that a small farm could produce and sell and do this more quickly that the tree farmers could..There for cutting into the tree farmers/loggers main crop and cash flow.The paper companies were scared to loose billions of $ due to the hemp so they began 'paying' politicians and government officials and police to treat it as a drug,they even helped pay for government groups to spread lies and stories about hemp and pot as being this very bad drug,date rape drug,smoke a joint kill your family etc,and then they helped pay and support the movie called Reefer Madness which was a B.S. movie to place scare tatics into Americans all around which I think really helped keep it in the underground for so many years.A fake movie full of lies and Bull Sh1t helped seal the deal,,between that and every crime that they felt they could connect with weed made weed the bad guy,,even though the people who did these crimes also did things like coke,drank,and pcp,it was always weeds fault.
Now the baby boomers are ready for weed to become legal,hippies from the 60's and 70's are coming back out of their shells and politicians who smoked it before see it as harmless and feel its a waste of time.
We spend billions a year fighting just weed,,states have made it legal for medical use have found out that they can make almost 14 billion $ a year!!!!!!!!
Thats just in california and according to CNNMONEY.COM.
With the US economy in a rut,this is very welcomed money for America,,if all states could make 10 billion a year,within a few years we will be outta debt as a country and almost Never be in debt again,politicians dont care for voters,or our voice or the people,they care all about $ their greed is the pathway to legal medical marijuana and we should support the facts and push these greedy bast@rds into what they want to do,,legalize it so they can cram this fat greedy fist into the cookie jar themselves.
Your second point here is correct. The lumber(paper)industry and many other corporate interests have contributed to the demise of both hemp and marijuana as a viable product/medicine. Prior to the Nixon administration, it was mainly a corporate effort to eliminate competing hemp products. In the early 70's, marijuana became a target of the pharmacuetical industry b/c they cannot make $$ off pot. They could not(nor can anyone)obtain a patent for a plant. And they figured out real quick that cannabis has over 60 different oils etc. that work in multiple combinations.

Bottom line for big pharmacuetical companies=
You can take the opium plant, isolate and alter their compounds chemically to manufacture codeine, hydrocodone(vicodin)etc. and turn a good profit. You can extract THC from a marijuana plant, but you cannot make $$ off THC on there end b/c it doesn't work.
sunbiz1 Reviewed by sunbiz1 on . WHY ISNT THE HERB LEGAL? i could understand if cannabis was a harmful drug and need to be made illegal but new evidence has proven that cannabis is LESS harmful to both the human body and mind then both alcohol and nicotine....ive found 2 websites that back me up on this and would love to hear what everybody else thinks....SAFER - Alcohol vs. Marijuana Cannabis less harmful than drinking, smoking: report Rating: 5