in any ban, someone's dollar is bigger than the issue the ban is sold with...

Hemp Is the Far Bigger Economic Issue Hiding Behind Legal Marijuana | Drugs | AlterNet:

Hemp may be the real reason marijuana is illegal. In the 1930s, the Hearst family set out to protect their vast timber holdings, much of which were being used to make paper.

But hemp produces five times as much paper per acre as do trees. Hemp paper is stronger and easier to make. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper, and one of Benjamin Franklin’s primary paper mills ran on it.

But the Hearsts used their newspapers to incite enough reefer madness to get marijuana banned in 1937. With that ban came complex laws that killed off the growing of hemp. The ecological devastation that’s followed with continued use of trees for paper has been epic.

on Joe miller's guards handcuffing a journalist

Joe Miller's Brownshirts : Dispatches from the Culture Wars:

Glenn Greenwald asks the right question:

If it's not completely intolerable to have active-duty soldiers handcuffing American journalists on U.S. soil while acting as private "guards" for Senate candidates, what would be?

If you aren't bothered by what happened, you forfeit any right to talk grandly about how much you love the Constitution.