This trend is a more human trend, putting drug addicts in jail won’t help the situation and I am glad some countries realized this. I am expecting only best results from all these initiatives. The future will tell if I am right.
Karren, Substance Abuse counselor

One more major thing.
Price pressure on corn, which is in just about everything we eat, has doubled it’s price due to corn’s use in making ethanol. Mexicans can no longer afford tortillas! American food prices have doubled.
And corn-based ethanol is produced at a net energy loss. It takes more energy to make ethanol from corn than is produced in the ethanol. And corn needs good land, herbicides, pesticides, and expensive fertilizers. When the price of corn goes up, the price of fertilizers rises accordingly. Even though the price of corn has doubled, farmers aren’t making more money. The extra money is going to big corporations and fuel prices getting it grown and brought to market.
Legalizing hemp—industrial hemp—not hemp for smoking—would produce more fuel at lower prices and enable people to buy food for less money.

Hemp would break the monopoly petroleum enjoys over fuel. Since Germany had no petrol, Diesel designed his engine to run on vegetable oils like hemp. Hemp oil is non-toxic, unlike petro-diesel, which is a carcinogen.
Hemp grows on the most marginal land, without genetic modification, herbicides or fertilizers.
Pharmaceutical companies and tobacco companies cannot compete with a weed Gramma can grow in the back yard.
Once the oil is pressed out, the fiber makes excellent rope, cloth, and paper. The timber companies would be cut out of the market. The National Forest would not be cut to make toilet paper.
Terrorists would not get so much of our money. Those who profit from black market prices and kill for territory would be out of business. End of the multi-billion dollar “War On Drugs”. Thousands of non-violent drug offenders would be out of prison, and we would not be spending thirty thousand dollars a year each to imprison them.
So, legal hemp is opposed by drug dealers,
the prison industry,
oil companies,
Monsanto and Dow chemicals,
tobacco companies,
pharmaceutical companies,
herbicide and pesticide companies, timber companies, the cotton industry,
paper companies,
terrorists, Republicans,
and the CIA.
In spite of this opposition, millions know from personal experience that hemp is less harmful than alcohol, tobacco, or petroleum.
They would rather put people in jail and send money to terrorists and drug lords than legalize hemp.

We don’t seem to care if a person has been convicted ten times for DWI’s.
Even when they have been guilty of killing someone with their DWI. They are soon turned out to repeat the crime.
Our attitude changes drastically with cocaine or pot, even if the pot has been prescribed by a physician. These offenders will be locked away in prison cells and no rehabilitation offered.
We are so screwed up in our justice system.