Legalization benefits consumers, but it has not been good for farmers. Under legalization, growers and dispensary owners are forced to pay exorbitant fees and taxes. The only way for them to keep their heads above water is to take their operations to a huge scale and compete with big corporations. Even under legalization, small-time farmers continue to endure familiar scenes of militarized commandos leaping from combat vehicles to cuff people and chop plants. Police unions, private prisons, alcohol & tobacco companies and the pharmaceutical industry are all threatened by the prospect of decriminalization. The prison business, America’s fastest growing industry, depends on this country maintaining the drug war as well as the false ideologies that justify it, to maximize the number of incarcerated citizens and maximize shareholder profits. The biggest prison population in the world today are a non-violent majority who never actually committed what are defined in the code as “crimes”.