"In November 2012, voters in Colorado and Washington passed landmark measures to legalize the production and sale of cannabis for social use-a first not only in the United States but also the world. Medical cannabis is now legal in eighteen states and Washington, D.C., and more than one million Americans have turned to it in place of conventional pharmaceuticals. Yet the federal government refuses to acknowledge these broader societal shifts and continues...

"During the Spanish conquests Cortés introduced hemp farming as part of his violent colonial campaign. In secret, locals began cultivating the plant for consumption. It eventually made its way to the United States through the immigrant labor force where it was shared with black laborers. It doesn't take long for American lawmakers to decry cannabis as the vice of 'inferior races.' Enter an era of propaganda designed to feed a moral panic about the...