Interestingly enough cannabis was legal in the US in the 1800s but then it was discovered that hemp could be used to produce a vastly superior form of paper and at a much MUCH faster rate (Hemp only takes 110 days to reach maturity, a tree needs 3600 days or 10 years before it can be turned into paper). And there was an Oligarch that had spent heavily on buying up land with Trees to corner the paper market and they basically lobbied for the government to ban Cannabis for that very reason. Alcohol was also made illegal because oil tycoons were seething at the discovery that Americans were filling and running their cars with Alcohol something that every American was able to produce at home, by simply fermenting food scraps.