(CBS News) SHOULD THE USE OF MARIJUANA BE MADE LEGAL? Demographic Yes No Don’t know Total 41% 52 7 Men 44% 51 5 Women 39% 53 8 Under age 35 52% 38 10 Age 35 and over 36% 59 5 Northeast 44% 48 8 Midwest 43% 49 8 South 35% 59 6 West 46% 48 6 Liberal 55% 35 10 Moderate 41% 52 7 Conservative 33% 64 3
Hooray, young Western liberals support legalization! My people! (Oh, wait, I’m 41! I only act and feel like a 27-year-old. Well, they say cannabis use does cause time distortion…)
I’d caution you about feeling too glum about the report and thinking, “Only 41% support legalization?” Think about the question, the bare bones “Should the use of marijuana be made legal?” Not “made legal for adults,” just “legal”. Understand also that when many people hear that question, the word “legal” to them invokes a frame of “accepted”, “promoted”, “safe”, “approved”, and “encouraged”. In that frame, 41% support is an amazing number. Imagine the results if the question was “Should the users of marijuana be arrested?” or “Should marijuana be taxed and regulated like alcohol?” or “Should federal prohibition of marijuana be eliminated, leaving the states to set marijuana regulations?”
Remember that asking people to imagine legalized marijuana for many of them is akin to asking them what double-necked spooplegorps from planet Xenious look like. Few people are alive today who can remember picking up cannabis tinctures at the general store, and even most of them were only children at the time. “Legalized marijuana” is an oxymoron to most, and after decades of demonization, few are going to turn on a dime and accept that all the years of reefer madness they’ve been fed by government are lies.
That’s why I encourage activists not to promote how great things will be under legalization – the money raised/saved, the lives unbroken, the planet revitalized by a new green hemp economy – because it is like telling people how great Earth will be after the spooplegorps visit here. What must be done first is to prepare their minds by making them focus on how awful prohibition is. Make them understand the money wasted, lives broken, and planet raped for resources because of marijuana prohibition. Only when they realize that accepting the status quo is a danger to them personally will they be ready to listen and accept alternatives.
(By the way, double-necked spooplegorps look a lot like former drug czar Bill Bennett, only they have a paler skin tone and never double down on a pair of tens.)
[...] It’s also interesting to note that the groups whose messages are accepted by CBS are trying to criminalize a legal activity (abortion), a policy position only supported by 42% of the American people surveyed in the latest Quinnipiac University poll; whereas NORML’s message of legalization rejected by CBS is a policy position supported by 44% to 53% of the American people surveyed lately by Gallup and Angus Reid. Even more interesting when CBS itself polled support for legalization at 41%. [...]
The poll is poorly set up, the sample size is too small, and phone polls are self selecting,
generally only strong advocates one way or the other actually participate in phone polls, they are marginally better then online polls but not by much.
A phone poll is usually used to support a preconceived assumption.
I’ve always found claims that legalizing marijuana would help the economy to be a bit optimistic. I mean, the reason it’s not legal is because lots of people have a vested financial interest in it being illegal. How much money would the alcohol industry lose?
Then again, drinking is so entrenched in our society that Anheuser-Busch would probably barely notice. Bong Pong would be an impractical game, since the pot equivalent of Keystone Light would be some of that much talked about 1% THC stuff.
But I digress, ending all the negative effects of prohibition should be enough to persuade anyone with a lick of sense.