Pew: Pot Support Hits Record High

from sfgate

Posted on April 4, 2013 at 2:49 pm by David Downs in Activism

Pew graphic on cannabis usage and reasons for it

“For the first time in more than four decades of polling on the issue, a majority of Americans favor legalizing the use of marijuana,” Pew Research Center writes today, surprising no one. “… 52% say that the use of marijuana should be made legal while 45% say it should not.”

A number of other polls have found similar numbers, but there’s lots to chew on in Pew’s study:

- Support for legal sales of marijuana rose 11 points in just two years, indicating we’ve hit a tipping point.

“I’ve always tended to be cautious in claiming that we’ve hit the ‘tipping point’ on marijuana legalization,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “But we’re there now. And I’d say we’re trailing marriage equality by just a half-step, even if far fewer elected officials are willing to join publicly with us as yet.”

- Pot use is no longer a moral issue for fifty percent of the population.

- Still, half of Americans said they would still feel uncomfortable around people using pot.

Maybe that’s why politicians have been such utter moral cowards on the issue, allowing 800,000 Americans to be arrested every year for pot crimes, or one every 42 seconds. A full 72 percent of the population said the government’s efforts to enforce marijuana laws cost more than they are worth.

“It’s time for politicians to catch up to the voters on this issue,” said Tom Angell, with the website Marijuana Majority. “Not too long ago, it was widely accepted in political circles that elected officials who wanted to get re-elected needed to act ‘tough’ on drugs and go out of their way to support the continued criminalization of marijuana. The opposite is quickly becoming true. A majority of Americans support legalizing marijuana, and you’re going to start seeing more politicians running toward our movement instead of away from it, just as we’ve seen happen with marriage equality recently.”

Other fun facts:

- 60 percent of Americans want the feds to butt out of states where pot is legal.

- 77 percent of the population believes marijuana has medical uses.

Most of the analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted March 13-17, 2013, among a national sample of 1,501 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia