The first flag ever flown, made by Betsy Ross, was made of hemp.
For the purpose of promoting pot? Really.
I saw something, History channel?, about how slavery would have just gone away all by itself over a fairly short time, but the sudden popularity of cotton just as suddenly made slavery very necessary and very popular, which made cotton more profitable and desirable, and hemp much less so, in fact, effectively banned all the way into obscurity.
There's a weird sort of circular irony(?) in there somewhere, if some fear of black Americans somehow justified the reason to make hemp illegal after what cotton's success put us all through, that has even lead to this war on drugs, common sense and the Bill of Rights.
Where the hell is that Reset button?!? We need to reboot this conversation.