Marijuana Opposition’s Poll Shows America Wants National Legalization
SAM or Smart Approaches to Marijuana is the largest group opposing the legalization of marijuana. They released a poll demonstrating just how much America wants national legalization of marijuana. Despite their efforts to twist questions and make the polling as confusing as they could, people answered that they believe the current policy on marijuana is unreasonable and not in the best interest of our country.
Marijuana is a schedule 1 drug here in the U.S. which means that cannabis is considered the worse sort of drug that can be found in the states and is regulated as such. It was recently reported that Tom Petty, the famed and loved musician, passed late last year from an overdose of opioid based prescription drugs that have a lower scheduling than marijuana. When such a crazy discrepancy exists, it is no wonder that people believe marijuana should be legalized nationally.
The poll took a unique approach to a legalization survey. Instead of asking people if they support legalization and giving them a binary yes-or-no choice, it asked 1,000 registered voters about several options for federal marijuana policy: keeping current policy (which prohibits possessing and using cannabis for any purpose), legalizing “physician-supervised medical use,” decriminalizing pot by removing criminal penalties for use and allowing medical use but prohibiting sales, and legalizing the commercial production, use, and sale of marijuana for recreational use.
Only 16 percent of Americans favored keeping the current policy. About 29 percent backed only medical legalization, 5 percent backed decriminalization, and 49 percent backed full legalization. The remaining 1 percent were not sure.
Even among Republicans, who tend to be more conservative on drug policy issues, current federal marijuana law fared poorly: Only 25 percent of Republican voters supported keeping the policy as is, 36 percent backed medical marijuana, 2 percent backed decriminalization, and 36 percent backed full legalization. The majority of Republican voters were for some form of legalization — medical or recreational. SAM said in a statement that the poll shows the country is evenly split on legalization. The group has often argued that other legalization polls, by posing the issue in a binary yes-or-no style, miss some of the potential nuances in marijuana policy and public opinion.
Canada is set to offer legalized cannabis for retail sale starting this summer and many people may be waiting to see how our northern neighbor does with nationally legalized cannabis first. What will it take before our legislators embrace bill’s like Sen. Cory Booker’s Marijuana Justice Act? Read more: https://goo.gl/x3pnDW Tags
Marijuana Justice ActNational legalizationpollSAMSmart Approaches to Marijuana
