America Supports Marijuana Policy Change

All Time High Support For Legal Pot In U.S.

By Dennis Romero
Tue., Oct. 20 2009 @ 12:02AM

This must be green week. On Monday President Obama called off
Bush-fearing federal agents who had their guns trained on medical
marijuana dispensaries in California and 13 other states where medicinal
pot is legal. A county superior court judge ruled the city's moratorium
on new dispensaries is illegal. And now a Gallup poll has found more
Americans since the 1970s -- when it first started asking respondents
for their opinions on the matter -- support the all-out legalization of
marijuana.

The organization' s research found that 44 percent of Americans support
legalizing and taxing the drug, while 54 percent want to keep it as an
outlaw substance. In 2003 Gallup found that 75 percent of Americans
support allowing doctors to prescribe the drug to relieve pain and
suffering in patients.

See chart: http://blogs. laweekly. com/ladaily/ gallup-pot. jpg

Support for national legalization keeps getting higher.
​
The latest Gallup poll found that support for legalization was highest
among self-proclaimed liberals (78 percent were in favor); conservatives
were almost opposite (72 percent were opposed). If the Western United
States were a country, pot would be fully legal here: 53 percent of
residents here favor it. Fifty percent of those under 50 support
legitimizing marijuana, and 45 percent of those aged 50 to 64 are in
favor too. Those over 64 are Reefer Madness holdouts, lending only 28
percent support for legalization.

Interestingly, in the arch-liberal year of 1970, after reactionary
forces, smarting from hippies in the streets and drug-use gone wild, had
put Richard Nixon in the White House, support for legal marijuana was at
its lowest: 12 percent. It's gone up each year since then. Even in 1979,
when drug use, particularly weed smoking, was at its peak among
Spicoli-era high schoolers, support for legalization (around 25 percent)
didn't touch this week's numbers.

In the evolution of American mores, particularly since the 1970s, the
nation, in fact, has grown more strict in many ways. Times Square is no
longer a center of sin, it's not acceptable to molest 13-year-olds (see
the Roman Polanski saga), spanking children is out, child-safety seats
are in, drunk-driving enforcement and penalties are more stringent than
ever, and science has often called bullshit on the '60s-era,
pie-in-the-sky promise of psychedelics and other drugs. And yet the idea
of marijuana as harmless at worst and healthy at best has gained
unprecedented ground, at least in blue state America.

Gallup's report states, "Most of the expansion in support for legalizing
marijuana since Gallup last measured this in 2005 is seen among women,
younger Americans, Democrats, moderates, and liberals. By comparison,
there has been little change in the views of men, seniors, Republicans,
independents, and conservatives. "

http://blogs. laweekly. com/ladaily/ city-news/ all-time- high-for- medical-ma\
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