Having studied the issue of American cannabis prohibition for quite a while now, since before even I got into AH, I can say that I do know a fair bit, though I am still expanding my knowledge base as well.
Firstly, more recent research that I've done seems to indicate that some minor concern about cannabis may actually go back to the middle of the 19th Century, mainly centered in the New York area, though it was relatively limited, as it seems there was more pressing concern about opium and morphine at that time; Dr. Charles Whitebread, a Professor of Law at USC, pointed out that opium addiction had become particularly problematic with Civil War veterans, so much so, in fact, that it was sometimes called the "soldier's disease", though that's another story for another time. It wasn't until the turn of the 20th Century that marijuana came to fall into the crosshairs of prohibitionists.
One important thing to remember is that the very first Federal-level law concerning drugs actually had nothing to do with marijuana. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 actually made us safer by putting regulations into place, such as requiring warning labels, and setting up a system of approval for items meant for human consumption, and, furthermore, actually did more to reduce drug addiction overall, particularly accidental addictions, as that was predominant cause of such in those days.
And even the Harrison Act of 1914, which did effectively ban opium, morphine, cocaine and related substances, wasn't technically an outright prohibition, believe it or not, but, rather, a tax(yes, you read that correctly): more specifically, a tax of $1,000, yes, $1k, for any non-medical use of cocaine and/or any of it's relatives.....and that's in 1914 dollars! Furthermore, this law made no mention of marijuana, hashish, or any other hallucinogenic substances. It did, however, inspire the later law which DID result in the cannabis ban; the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. However, though, as some may already know, prohibition really started on the local and state levels.
The first states to outright ban cannabis on a statewide level were Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Montana. Guess what these particular states all had in common? Yes, they are all Western states, but there is one thing particular to these four; every single one of these states was seeing a significant influx of Latino workers, mostly from Mexico.
Yes, sadly, xenophobia and even outright racism played not just a major, but perhaps a KEY role in the proposition, and signing, of these laws in several parts of the country; Mexicans weren't quite the only scapegoats(blacks definitely were to an extent, as well, especially in the South), but the most notable ones by far.
With that said, however, I'd like to touch on an important point: many of my fellow Americans will probably remember all those anti-drug PSAs of the '70s, '80s and '90s, right? And the pan-to-the-egg stuff and the fears of MJ being a "gateway" to worse drugs? Well, believe it or not, the latter is actually older than television(apologies to TVTropes)! There was an exception to the rule: the majority of the laws passed in the Northeast were really more based on the fear of "substitution", as it was called then, then anything else.....none of these states had many Mexicans at all and even African-Americans weren't all that common outside of Harlem and a few other places in the Big Apple.
And then there's the strange case of Utah. Believe it or not, it was actually the Mormon church that got cannabis banned in this state. Around 1910 or so, an unusually large number of Mormons left Utah for northern Mexico, Sonora and Chihuahua in particular, motivated by a strong desire to convert as many people as possible to their religion. Though they didn't have a lot of luck in this regard, many did pick up a habit from the locals; marijuana smoking. And lots of it. Many traditionalist Mormons, once they realized what had happened, were horrified. Just a year later, Utah passed it's own cannabis banning law.
State after state followed, until by 1930, 27 states altogether banned the drug, all the while being assisted by yellow journalism from the likes of W.R. Hearst, et al.....But the coup de grace came in 1937 with the aforementioned Marihuana Tax Act.
What some may not realize is that there were quite a few people with a vested interest in getting not just cannabis, but even hemp in general, banned. Many probably do recognize the pharma and chemical industries(companies like DuPont, Dow, etc.) as being amongst the key supporters of such, but the timber, alcohol and tobacco industries played their own role as wells, and there may be others, too, which I haven't covered.
In any case, there was hardly any real debate, and there were even a few instances of outright dishonesty by prohibitionists; one person even claimed that the American Medical Association supported prohibition, when in fact, said organization was actually quite skeptical of such; ironically, they were later deried by the members of the Committee.
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It really depends on the situation, TBH. I can possibly see some smaller, enterprising companies, especially Northern ones, trying their hand at selling marijuana; this is especially doable if you can at least partly butterfly the fears of "substitution"(which certainly isn't all that hard, TBH.).
Southern companies, however, are going to be a different matter, sadly; no matter how you slice it, no Southern tobacco baron who has any business sense is going to want to risk raising the ire of high society and reactionaries for selling this "brown man's" drug, even if they could afford to do so, and smaller companies probably couldn't afford to gamble at all, regardless. If there's going to be any cannabis selling in the South, the vast majority of it would almost certainly come from local farmers or small co-ops(there might be an exception for the major cities, though, especially port towns like New Orleans, Savannah, Charleston, Norfolk, etc.).
And in both cases, there's going to be a potential major problem: due to the fact that marijuana has virtually NONE of the health risks that tobacco does, there is a very real risk of very significant profit losses from people switching from tobacco to cannabis, or not buying tobacco, period, for companies, or people, that have tried to grow both plants, at least in the long term, if not the short term as well.
And then, there's the Western states, where pretty much anything could happen, depending on the POD and such.
I've heard about it. There seems to be some good information, but the author's claim that American marijuana prohibition's origins actually lay in Mexico are, at best, dubious, TBH.
Though, unfortunately, there IS some truth to that. DuPont was indeed supportive of cannabis prohibition, mainly due to the fact that it was developing a huge variety of artificial substances, not just the fibers you mentioned, but plenty of others.
Here's just one link: It's mainly a general overview, though it does touch on the Hearst-DuPont connection.
http://washington-drug-defense.com/REEFER_MADNESS
And here's some sources for the other stuff, by the way:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/taxact/taxact.htm
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/vlr/vlr4.htm
