Support for Marijuana Legalization is Growing in America
A new CBS/NYT poll finds that 41% of Americans agree that marijuana use should be legalized. While legalization still fails to garner majority support, it’s clear that we’re headed in the right direction. Notice that only 27% supported legalization in 1979:
LEGALIZING MARIJUANA
Like 30 years ago, a majority of Americans do not think the use of marijuana should be made legal, but the percentage that thinks it should be has grown. Now, 41% of Americans support legalizing marijuana use, compared to just 27% who felt that way in 1979.SHOULD MARIJUANA USE BE LEGALIZED?
CBS/NYT CBS/NYT
Now /1979
Yes 41% 27%
No 52% 69%There is a huge generation gap on this issue. More adults under 45 (49%) approve of legalizing marijuana use than oppose (45%), while just 31% of adults over age 45 approve of it; six in 10 are opposed.
The generation gap is particularly encouraging, confirming a popular theory among reformers that if we simply wait not-so-patiently, we’ll eventually win when our opposition literally drops dead.
These numbers reveal that we’re well within striking distance of achieving majority support for legalization. Moreover, we’re comfortably within the range in which meaningful reform to our marijuana laws will produce significant and vocal approval from the public. If there was ever a time when our political climate was fatally non-receptive to this idea, we have moved beyond that.
Keep in mind that the 41% result was arrived at without any particular political context. That’s just the number of people who generally walk around believing that marijuana should be legal. It’s possible to build that number significantly when the question is framed around an actual policy proposal, such as in Massachusetts where 65% of voters supported decriminalization. Because our arguments are strong, we benefit from the debate.
Legalization initiatives were unsuccessful in Nevada and Colorado in 2004, but I’d like to think that in the current change-focused political climate, it’s quite possible that similar measures would be victorious. For one thing, the departure of drug czar John Walters means we’re unlikely to face the same vicious opposition we’ve become accustomed to, as I simply do not envision Obama’s White House undertaking a regional propaganda scare-tour the next time we try something big.
The fact is that we’re moving in exactly the right direction, though not nearly as fast as any of us would prefer. We must be patient, so long as our patience doesn’t take the form of inaction. We’re entering a period of remarkable political opportunity for our cause.
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redditNew Hampshire is moving toward secession
Comment posted by Moonrider on Tue, 02/03/2009 - 4:59pmhttp://bungalowbillscw.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-hampshire-hcr-6-demands-...
I emailed my state legislators suggesting they make a similar resolution.
If we cannot get the federal government to behave in a Constitutional manner then each state must wtihdraw its support for the federal government. It is the only bloodless method of carrying out our duty as American citizens as laid out in our Declaration of Independence. That duty being:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
I'm pro-choice on EVERYTHING!
Victory by Attrition in 2030
Comment posted by Giordano on Tue, 02/03/2009 - 5:46pmGraphing the poll numbers from above for cannabis legalization, and extrapolating a straight line through the two points, gives 2030 as the year in which public opinion favoring legalization reaches 51-percent.
It’s encouraging to think it may all be over by 2030. Advantages already exist due to the steady erosion of the opposition via grim reaper. Ironically, some who oppose medical marijuana may also be sidelined before 2030 by medical conditions that marijuana is known to moderate, such as Alzheimer’s. However, twenty-one more years of the drug war, encompassing yet another generation of lives ruined or inextricably altered by a self-serving justice system, is simply not acceptable.
Growing public awareness of the need for drug law reform means it’s an excellent time to shift gears and accelerate the machinery of change. Many more prospects for legal reform will appear. There will be opportunities to join with and work along side of similarly oppressed groups of activists who confront the same opposition culture, and to come together to preserve local, national, and international freedoms from vile and useless drug laws and other forms of petty tyranny. With more work, victory can still be achieved well before 2030.
Giordano
Actually, I don't think it is the "boomers"
Comment posted by Moonrider on Fri, 02/06/2009 - 2:43pmwho are holding up the legalization process, it's the even older generation, the parents of the "boomers". I'm right in between (age 64), some consider those my age to be "boomers" and some put us in another separate category. I think most "boomers" would (do?) support legalization having experienced/watched the whole flower power/free love thing and the open and prolific use of various drugs, first hand.
My friends, regardless of age (some are older some younger and some the same age) either smoke pot or are tolerant of pot smoking by others. Many of them have dabbled to a greater or lesser extent with other drugs (Acid/mushrooms, are, by far, the most popular, after pot), a few of them are dealing with addiction (coke & alcohol, for the most part, but there are a couple who were addicted to prescription drugs -- Valium and Oxycontin -- and one who was into meth but got out before destroying her life completely). Except for the ones dealiang with addiction issues they all drink, most of them responsibly, and most of them no longer dabble in anything but pot and psychedelics, but here are a few who do.
One friend who never went beyond pot in the illicit drug category, but who sometimes overdoes the alcohol a bit, has a daughter who is strung out on meth. But ALL of them, each and everyone of them supports the end of Prohibition 2.0.
I recently was able to have a positive influence on the opinon of a fence sitter, a person I do not know in real life, but a friend in the online game World of Warcraft (I think the vast majority of players, at least in my realm, either tolerate or openly support the idea of legalization of marijuana, but others drugs are the sticking point for some of them) I was in chat with her and I don't recall how we got on the subject but by the end of the chat she was more open to the idea of complete legalization of all drugs.
It really is my parent's generation that is still holding on to their hidebound opinions about the "dangers of drugs". My parents have already left this mortal plane, they tolerated my use of cannabis and would have supported its legalization. I didn't begin to smoke it until I was 25, married (since age 18, still married to same guy), and had already had my three children. But they would not have supported legalization of any other drugs. They leaned libertarian but never to the extent my brother and I have, the two of us are full on libertarians. We are both pro-choice on EVERYTHING!
Evangelicals?
Comment posted by mlang52 on Sat, 02/07/2009 - 2:49pmAlthough you might be right, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, grandma! There are plenty of Christians and conservatives who view this as a disgrace! Don't generalize. It can be divisive. Alcohol elitists can come down on "potheads" even more severely than the evangelicals (at least evangelicals don't drink, do they?). No matter what, I would never let anyone insult me enough to stop fighting this insane behavior towards cannabis. It is much less toxic than alcohol.
And kids can buy it easier at school than they can get booze or cigarettes. So, the cry "for the kids" is plain stupid. If they were, truly concerned about kids, they would figure out how to get it out of the schools. But, since they still can get drugs in prison, I would, dare, say that the present system would not do it. At least, if the drugs were regulated like alcohol, the kids would not be able to get them as easily.
I happen to believe that THC is much less toxic as compared to alcohol. It is crazy to keep fighting against its legalization. That is, if the people arguing have any common sense! It has more to do with not taking money away from private prisons, LE and politicians than anything else!
The gateway drug argument keeps coming up. I think that there are, too many, parents, out there, who don't want to admit that the first illegal drug their kids abuse they get at home, out of the liquor cabinet! Alcohol is the gateway drug!
I am glad to see you speaking up! older people need to know the entire thing is not working! Keep up the good work! All this crap over a plant the grows out of the ground!
cbs pot poll or is it poll pot
Comment posted by consfearacy on Tue, 02/03/2009 - 3:06amconsfearacy
if cbs wants to do a pot poll, then it should do an internal poll of its own employees. this other poll crap is just that, crap.