I like how your comment points out cannabis. > The US government exercises this power all the time. It's why most cannabis dispensaries and growers are forced

I like how your comment points out cannabis. > The US government exercises this power all the time. It's why most cannabis dispensaries and growers are forced to deal with cash because they're excluded from the banking system. The US tried to ban the use of cannabis. The result was not that cannabis stopped being used or that it significantly reduced the levels of cannabis use - instead, recreational cannabis users and those with legitimate reasons for using it were forced into more dangerous black market activity, and often criminalized and put behind bars. Millions of dollars of state funding was spent exercising this drug war, which most people now see as a colossal failure, and finally some states are decriminalizing and legalizing cannabis use so long as it falls within government regulations. No single country can do much to take the network offline by banning mining. If all countries in unison decided to criminalize mining and enact a PoW-war, and were successful the blanket removal of PoW mining, then maybe the network would suffer to remain online, and users would be forced to migrate to more resilient consensus mechanisms like Proof of Stake.