Look at the marijuana legalization polls over the last few months. We had one CBS poll I believe that said nationwide 38% of the voting aged population supports legalizing marijuana, and one from Zogby that said 52% are for legalizing marijuana. Then there have been several other polls and in all of them forty some odd percent of those polled support legalization, usually somewhere in the low to mid forties. You can’t really believe the polls that much but with so many showing nationwide support for legalizing in the low to mid forties I think it’s a pretty safe bet right now that somewhere between 40 and 45% of the voting aged public in this country support legalizing marijuana, probably closer to 45%.

Personally, I just ignore the really low percentage in the CBS poll and the high percentage in the recent Zogby poll because they just aren’t in line with all the other polls. The politicians who need to see support from the people before they will act aren’t going to believe that one Zogby poll either. They have to see that the trend is that support for legalizing is has been increasing since the early Nineties and that it is increasing at an even faster pace now than in years past. When we start seeing several polls coming back with greater than 50% support for legalization, then we’re going to see politicians really taking notice.

Rasmussen does one thing that ticks me off when they report these poll results. This is the second time in the last few months they’ve done a poll asking legalization questions and made some comment about how there is so much more support from those under 40 than those 40 and older. That’s very misleading. Of course there is less support from those 40 and older because that group includes those 65 and older who in most cases are strongly opposed to legalization. Only a small fraction of them support it. The under 40 group includes those 18 to 29, a slightly larger group of people than the 65 and older group, who always have much higher levels of support for legalization than older age groups. For years now the majority of 18 to 29 year olds have been for legalizing marijuana. But if you were to look at people in their thirties, forties, fifties, and maybe even those in their early sixties you’d see that there isn’t that much variation in levels of support in these groups.

One poll of just Ohioans that came out recently had 37% of Ohioans for legalizing marijuana. When they broke down the age demographics you could see that 37% those 30 through 45 supported legalization and a slightly higher percentage, 38%, of those 46 through 64 were for legalizing. There was 59% support for legalizing from those 18 to 29 and only 12% of those 65 and older were for it. Those 65 and older were very much against it, with 72% saying they were “strongly opposed” and only 15% who were just “somewhat opposed.” So, 87% were opposed and the vast majority of them were strongly opposed.

You’d see the same basic dynamics in a national poll if they broke the demographics down for all of us to see. But Rasmussen has to come out and make it look like people in their forties and fifties are really against legalization, and I think perhaps that’s because they want to influence politicians who tend to worry more about what older voters think because they are the ones who actually exercise their right to vote even in mid term elections.

http://www.ipr.uc.edu/documents/op050809.pdf

Or as my Dad once observed, “If you need a few hundred thousand boys to fight an overseas war for oil, who do you think will volunteer, beer drinkers or pot smokers?”

The idea that it’s a moral issue is just a front for the real driving force. The war on marijuana is nothing more than a thinly veiled war on dissent. Marijuana is often associated with the bleeding hearts and artists. Those who might question they way things are done. It would be unconstitutional to ban dissent and deviance in this country, so this facade called the drug war was created to allow the government to oppress a certain type of people in the name of supposed public safety.

If people in this country could look at this issue objectively, they would see that in truth it is behavior that we usually only attribute to totalitarian dictatorships. That’s why the founding fathers made sure the government couldn’t do this when they wrote the constitution.

But Nixon really didn’t like those hippies, so the constitution was long ago thrown out the window.

..end of argument.

I’m so sick of the Gateway Drug Argument. Alcohol is the ULTIMATE GATEWAY DRUG. It’s probably 90% of people’s first buzz. And if they like it, the want more. None of my successful friends that smoke got into heavy drugs like coke.

Once it’s legal it will be exciting for the first 3 months. After that, the people who smoke now, will probably smoke the same amount. And the people who won’t, simply won’t. Not much will change.

And if treated like alcohol. Kids will have as much access to it as a 6 pack of beer.

So legalize it. And to the folks that say NO and that have never done it, what right do they have to judge it?

The only reason that it’s bad for society is because there’s a black market that creates crime.