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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.

Paul Armentano and NORML came out last month with a report, "Emerging Clinical Applications For Cannabis & Cannabinoids: A Review of the Recent Scientific Literature, 2000 — 2009," detailing the findings of scientific research on marijuana and its derivatives for treating a wide range of diseases and conditions -- ALS, Alzheimer's and Fibromyalgia, to name just a few. Paul made a significant observation in the foreword to the report:

Whereas researchers in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s primarily assessed cannabis' ability to temporarily alleviate various disease symptoms — such as the nausea associated with cancer chemotherapy — scientists today are exploring the potential role of cannabinoids to modify disease.

Most of the public has already woken up to the lie that's been told by drug warriors to justify medical prohibition of marijuana, the false claim that it has no medical uses. What may never be fully understood is the opportunities tragically lost, the good that could have been done if promising lines of research had been pursued decades earlier instead of decades later, but for our government's bizarre antagonism against a plant...

Radley Balko covers the second wrong-door raid in two months committed by drug agents in Gwinnett County, Georgia.

We haven't reported lately on the issue of under-treatment of pain, so this weekend day seemed like a good time to link to a couple of the sites whose people labor in trenches of the pain struggle every day. First, the war on pain doctors continues, with the latest major battle being that of Wichita-area Dr. Stephen Schneider and his wife Linda Schneider. The Schneiders were charged with the deaths of 56 patients by over-prescribing pain medications, but the judge has now limited the case to just four. My guess is that most of these patients passed due to the medical issues that led them to seek treatment, just as one would expect to happen in any medical practice that takes on seriously ill patients; and that a few might have needed the drugs for pain but misused them (as one would also expect to happen sometimes). I haven't examined the case closely enough for that to be more than a guess, but it's an educated guess, as that is usually what is going on in these pain doctor trials. Visit the Pain Relief Network news update page for info. How have things come to this? Big topic, but Dr. Alex DeLuca has a post last week on his "War on Doctors / Pain Crisis" blog, "The Distortion of Medicine and Confusion of Standards," that goes into some of it. A key part of the problem is that while modern pain management textbooks recommend "titration to effect" -- e.g. "gradually increasing the opioid dose until the pain is relieved or until untreatable side effects prevent further dosage increase" -- most doctors just don't do that. And so patients in ongoing, serious pain go without adequate treatment. This makes the typical standard of pain care below medical standards. But it also means that doctors who wrongly believe they shouldn't be relieving a patient's pain are available to testify in trials for the prosecution -- hence the Schneider trial and many others. Even when the defense brings in experts to testify as to what the expert view really is, it creates confusion that can lead to false convictions. This is in fact what happened in the famous William Hurwitz case. DeLuca goes into this in more detail in an interview filmed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, linked to in his post, so check it out. Another physician victim of the pain wars, Dr. William Mangino, recently submitted a Reply Brief in the appeal of his case. He is imprisoned in Pennsylvania, and he wrote the brief himself. It paints a pretty terrible picture of the what the government is doing in these cases. Dr. Mangino sent us a copy, via one of his friends, and we've posted it here.