51% of Americans think alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana

Hey, any time more than half of Americans think something good about marijuana, we're happy.

…but 44% think marijuana is equally as dangerous or more dangerous than alcohol!

Fifty-one percent (51%) of American adults say alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Just 19% disagree and say pot is worse.

But 25% say both are equally dangerous. Just two percent (2%) say neither is dangerous.

Younger adults are more likely than their elders to view alcohol as the more dangerous of the two.

Unmarried adults are more critical of alcohol than those who are married. Those with children at home think alcohol is more dangerous than those without kids living with them.

This finding surprised me, as I figured parents with kids at home would be more likely to succumb to reefer madness hysteria.  Is it really possible that a majority of parents would rather catch their kid smoking a joint than drinking a beer?

As California looks for solutions to its ongoing budget problems, 47% of voters in the state say marijuana should be legalized and taxed. Nearly as many (42%) oppose the state legalizing and taxing the drug.

Nationally, 41% of likely voters think the United States should legalize and tax marijuana, but 49% are opposed.

President Obama’s new drug czar Gil Kerlikowske has signaled a shift away from the decades-old war on drugs toward more emphasis on health treatment for drug users. However, 54% of voters say illegal drug use is primarily a criminal justice issue rather than a matter of public health.

This I would attribute to the other illegal drugs and the tendency of their users to commit more crimes.  I’d like to see the question narrowed down to just marijuana use; is it an issue of public health or criminal justice?

Only 28% of voters believe that the legalization of marijuana in the United States would help to reduce drug-related violence in Mexico.

This number shows that we haven’t done a good enough job educating people about the contribution of marijuana to the profits of the Mexican cartels.  Even with Arizona’s attorney general and others estimating 60%-70% of cartel profits stem from marijuana trafficking, it seems the people haven’t gotten the word.  They also may believe that even if we did dry up their major funding source through marijuana legalization that the cartels would just shift their profits and violence to controlling the trafficking of hard drugs.  Nobody ever stops to consider how the cartels are going to magically create millions of new American cocaine and heroin users to make up for the loss of marijuana business, especially when marijuana users would have greater access to a better product under legalization.

There is a reason there is no Cocaine Culture or Heroin Times magazines.  Cocaine and heroin use most often are addictions; marijuana use is most often a lifestyle.