A<\/span> record number of Americans now support cannabis legalization efforts across the U.S., according to a new poll released by Gallup on Wednesday.<\/p>\n According to Gallup\u2019s new data<\/a>, 64 percent of Americans now support the legalization of adults recreationally using marijuana. Things have been trending upwards since Gallup recorded a slight dip in legalization support following 2012\u2019s winning legalization ballot initiatives in Colorado<\/a> and Oregon<\/a> \u2014 but support didn\u2019t drop below 50 percent at the time.<\/p>\n Gallup has been polling Americans on the subject of marijuana for nearly half a century, with their first numbers on the subject dating back to 1969, when only 12 percent of people supported the idea. Ten years later support peaked at 28 percent, but faded through the prime years of Reagan\u2019s drug war<\/a>. By the time California passed Proposition 215 in 1996, we were back up to a quarter of Americans supporting the idea. Since the 2013 survey<\/a>, a majority of Americans have supported legalization.<\/p>\n One of the biggest takeaways from this year\u2019s survey is that a majority of Republicans now support the issue, at 51 percent. Republican support jumped a whopping 9 percent from last year, meaning basically one in 10 Republicans changed their view on marijuana in the last year. A majority of Democrats began favoring the issue consistently in 2009, with independents following in 2010.<\/p>\n \u201cThese new numbers, and the continuing trend they confirm, show that legal marijuana continues to be way more popular than almost any politician \u2014 increasingly so,\u201d said Marijuana Majority<\/a> Chairman Tom Angell in a statement on the new numbers.<\/p>\n Angell says despite threatening rhetoric from some Trump administration officials, Americans\u2019 support for regulating marijuana like alcohol only continues to rise year over year. He said that this bodes well for efforts to pass cannabis laws in more states in 2018 \u2014 both on the ballot and through state legislatures.<\/p>\n \u201cNearly two out of three Americans now say that marijuana should be legalized, and it would be politically disastrous for the Trump administration to allow Jeff Sessions<\/a> to break the president\u2019s campaign pledges to respect state laws,\u201d said Angell.<\/p>\n Marijuana Policy Project<\/a> Director of Communications Morgan Fox wasn\u2019t surprised by the new findings, as he believes Americans have been worn down by the war on pot.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes sense that support for ending marijuana prohibition is increasing,\u201d Fox said.<\/p>\n \u201cAmericans are tired of wasting resources arresting hundreds of thousands of individuals every year for using a substance that is safer than alcohol.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Fox believes that in the five years since the first states made marijuana legal for adults, it has become increasingly clear that \u2014 unlike prohibition \u2014 regulation works. \u201cAdult-use marijuana laws create jobs, generate tax revenue and protect consumers while taking the marijuana market out of the hands of criminals,\u201d Fox said.<\/p>\n Fox added that it is crucial that the federal government grant states the freedom to serve as laboratories of democracy. \u201cWe urge the Department of Justice in particular to continue its policy of not interfering in states with well-regulated adult-use and medical marijuana programs while lawmakers catch up to the will of the people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The new chief at one of the world\u2019s leading drug policy reform organizations also weighed in on the numbers and the feds.<\/p>\n \u201cMarijuana legalization is far more popular than Jeff Sessions or Donald Trump and will survive them both,\u201d said Maria McFarland S\u00e1nchez-Moreno, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.<\/a> \u201cInstead of wasting limited law enforcement resources trying to stop successful state-level legalization initiatives, U.S. officials should listen to the clear, bipartisan message the public is sending them, and support federal marijuana reform as well.\u201d<\/p>\n McFarland S\u00e1nchez-Moreno continued, in a statement<\/a>,<\/u> to point out that Americans are beyond the question of whether we want to legalize cannabis.<\/p>\n \u201cThe question is no longer whether we should legalize marijuana, but rather how we should do it,\u201d added McFarland S\u00e1nchez-Moreno, citing Senator Cory Booker\u2019s efforts<\/a>. \u201cThe Marijuana Justice Act would legalize marijuana the right way, by not only stopping the ongoing harms of prohibition, but also beginning to address the devastation that marijuana prohibition has wrought, particularly among communities of color.\u201d<\/p>\n Gallup noted when releasing the data that Americans views on same-sex marriage have been similar over time. Both issues saw about a quarter of Americans supporting them in the 1990s and both came in at 64 percent support this year. Gallup says they\u2019ve found Americans becoming more liberal on a variety of social issues.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you support cannabis legalization?<\/p>\n The post Record 64 Percent of Americans Support Legalizing Marijuana<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
For the first time in Gallup\u2019s records, a majority of Republicans now support legalizing adult use cannabis. A record number of Americans now support cannabis legalization efforts across the U.S., according to a new poll released by Gallup on Wednesday. According to Gallup\u2019s new data, 64 percent of Americans nowContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,80,901,81,1571],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20582"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20583,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20582\/revisions\/20583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Record 64 Percent of Americans Support Legalizing Marijuana<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"