I was reading an article in the 5/23 edition of DMN about Prohibition 80+ years back, and realized that you could easily replace references to 'alcohol' with 'Cannabis'.

Commentary below from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midlothiantexas/message/6633

There was an interesting article in the Dallas Morning News on Sunday the 23rd about Prohibition.

All through the article it became quite apparent that you could insert the word 'Marijuana' in place of 'Alcohol' and the article would still ring true. Sure, we don't have clandestine clubs of every corner and it does not yet involve the same percentage of the population that Prohibition did, but every mention of how illogical, expensive, and ineffective it was, could be applied to our current Prohibition against Cannabis. We still have organized crime making the big bucks, they just happen to be based in Mexico and Central America.

There have been theories that the original prohibition (Alcohol) was an effort to keep people from making alcohol as a motor fuel, and be forced to use oil. That theory has some validity for the current Prohibition (Cannabis), since we could actually run todays diesel engines from hemp seed oil. So, if we make hemp illegal based on the idea that law enforcement is to ignorant to to tell the difference between pot and hemp, which they are not, because it's not hard to tell, we can keep people from growing hemp as a motor fuel. And be forced to use oil.

So it might be that Prohibition of 80 years ago is the same as Prohibition of today, both based on keeping us dependent on oil. We could use Hemp as a fuel, paper, fabric, food, etc. Perhaps there are many industries that would lose money if Hemp were legal. So, the Prohibition on Cannabis must be upheld by the Reefer Madness lies in order to prohibit Hemp.

Good for the few, bad for the rest. We truly are a nation of victims.