u/JapaneseNJfan

Just to preface, I never done weed, I live in Japan where Weed is heavily demonized and illegal. However, I was taking to my American friend that has done weed and knows all about it. It really opened my eyes on “oh, weed’s actually not a bad thing, my mate told me to watch smoke a joint and watch cartoons when I have the chance lol. However we were talking about some stuff about the demonization of weed in Japan and people around the world. I understand there was a massive racism thing in America, but I wanted to ask another theory. My theory (kinda derived from my friend) is that a factor on why it was illegal in many countries is that Cigarettes and Tobacco were leaders for economic growth in a country, whereas weed, people are able to grow their own and purchase less from the big markets. I’m guessing governments were like “oh shit, people might be doing this and stop spending on goods” so they considered it and banned it. The reason I think why many countries and states in america are unbanning weed is because they started to see the diminishing returns on humans cigarettes has, plus the UK’s ban on cigarettes, and also saw how other forms of goods can subsidize for the impact cigarettes have, therefore they were like “yeaaa we should let them smoke something better”. I think this is a valid argument and point, but can someone please fact check and give me more information on this????