In a turn of events that should shock approximately nobody reading this article, recent polling shows that the majority of Californians are happy with the wake of adult-use cannabis legalization, and the rest of the country seems to want what they\u2019re having because two-thirds of American citizens now favor federal measures to legalize pot. Man, doesn\u2019t it feel great to be\u00a0right<\/i>?<\/p>\n
In a\u00a0poll<\/a>\u00a0from Quinnipiac University released Feb. 6, 54 percent of California voters said that marijuana legalization has been good for their state, with only 31 percent of respondents holding the opposite opinion. Young people, men and Democrats were most positive post-legalization: 70 percent of respondents ages 18-34 were happy with legalization, as were 59 percent of men and 61 percent of Democrats. Least pleased were Republicans (a mere 31 percent thought legalization was a good thing) and voters over the age of 65, only 38 percent of whom expressed approval for California\u2019s adult-use revolution.<\/p>\n These numbers seem to gel with what we already know about the broader national consensus on marijuana legalization. According to a\u00a0Gallup poll<\/a>\u00a0from Oct. 2018, 66 percent of Americans now support legalizing marijuana. The group noted that not only was this \u201canother new high\u201d in American approval of legal pot, it was the third year in a row that record was broken.<\/p>\n In an arguably all-too-rare bipartisan turn, a majority of both Republicans and Democrats support legalization, with 53 percent of Republicans in favor of the policy and a whopping 75 percent of Democrats on board as well.<\/p>\n The feedback from these nationwide numbers has already been made apparent in the presidential campaigns of several politicians vying for the Democratic Party\u2019s nomination, most notably Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Kamala Harris. Booker made a point to mention the end of marijuana prohibition as a priority of his when he announced his\u00a0campaign<\/a>\u00a0earlier this month, and Harris\u00a0caught flack<\/a>\u00a0recently for her\u00a0mixed record<\/a>\u00a0on the issue, no matter how gung-ho on cannabis she says she is in the present.<\/p>\n Based on Gallup\u2019s results, it seems not only will all serious Democratic presidential candidates have to address marijuana legalization \u2014 if they\u2019re smart, they\u2019ll listen to the people and support the end of prohibition.<\/p>\n But something that Quinnipiac University\u2019s February poll addressed that neither every presidential candidate nor every state with legalization laws in place has fully reckoned with: What should become of marijuana-related criminal records once legalization is enacted?<\/p>\n California voters, for their part, spoke out strongly in favor of erasing criminal records for marijuana possession. Per a press release from California\u2019s\u00a0NORML chapter<\/a>, \u201cthere is almost no gender gap\u201d when it comes to supporting the erasure of such records, and support for the measure was spread \u201cstrongly across all regions of California and all age groups.\u201d In total, 64 percent of respondents said they supported erasing marijuana possession records, with only 28 percent opposing.<\/p>\n \u201cThis poll shows that California voters are happy with marijuana legalization in the state, and moreover don\u2019t want to see people punished for possessing pot,\u201d said Ellen Komp, deputy director of California NORML, in a press release. \u201cThe dire consequences opponents warned of before voters approved Prop. 64 in 2016 to legalize the recreational use and sale of cannabis haven\u2019t materialized, and instead, the state is starting to see the benefits of a regulated market.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately, as every marijuana enthusiast knows, just because something is popular doesn\u2019t mean the government is going to be smart or empathetic enough to make it happen, especially when minorities are the ones disproportionately shouldering the burden of cannabis prohibition.<\/p>\n But with a few politicians already promising drug war reparations, and many others quickly falling in line with whatever they think will make them stand out in the veritable sea of centrists and pseudo-progressives looking to unseat Trump, hopes should be higher than ever for some positive changes in the realm of federal cannabis legalization.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, what kind of reparations do you support in the wake of legalization?<\/p>\n The post Surprise, Surprise: Polls Show Americans Are Excited About Legal Marijuana<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In a turn of events that should shock approximately nobody reading this article, recent polling shows that the majority of Californians are happy with the wake of adult-use cannabis legalization, and the rest of the country seems to want what they\u2019re having because two-thirds of American citizens now favor federalContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[159,148,50,977,7676,4211,6170,5189,81,2111],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32972"}],"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\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32972"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32973,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32972\/revisions\/32973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Californian Case Study<\/h4>\n
Beyond Legal Bud<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Surprise, Surprise: Polls Show Americans Are Excited About Legal Marijuana<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"