Also - if you overlay a map of the US political liberal/republican over a map of the places in the US where cannabis is legal to use for recreation or medical purposes - it's pretty much the same.

There are a few exceptions, but these places are where there is an exceptionally high number of prescription painkiller abuse.

It also appears that when a US state wants to pass a few controversial laws, there's a trend of bringing up the legal cannabis debate.

This then becomes the leading issue, while the other - previously disputed laws - pass witout much notice.

Often, there is a spate of spice related incidents, eg, deaths or poisonings at the time just before or after the cannabis debate.

It's a great obfuscation tactic in order to get the public looking only at the dope and the deaths and forgetting that they were all mad that they were changing the age for kindergarten to a year older, or whatever.

(I've researched this a lot over the past few years - it's a definite trend. Similar to pizza being the most reported food-stuff in Erowid's experience reports with cannabis and peanut butter and jam sandwiches with diphenydramine, etc... Good for user demographics - meth addicts love fast food, LSD users describe in great detail their vegan sushi and starbucks latte, and how the nice guy at starbucks made a chocolate leaf in the foam, symbolising their vegan sushi beliefs with corporate America and how the world is one, blah blah).