By Benjie Cooper
IG: @nuglifenews
YouTube: Lucid’s Vlog
As the number of states with medicinal or recreational marijuana laws has continued to grow over the past several years, general public opinion has also shifted in favor of legalization.
More than half of the United States have enacted medicinal cannabis laws, and adult-use marijuana laws are in place in nine states as well as the District of Columbia.
Last month, the governor of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory, signed a bill to legalize cannabis for adults aged 21 and up.
According to new survey data from the Pew Research Center, 62% of Americans believe that cannabis should be legalized, 34% think it should remain illegal, and 4% are undecided. Support is up from 2017 when it was at 61%.
By comparison, data from the General Social Survey in 1987 showed that 16% supported legalizing marijuana and 81% opposed it. Support fluctuated between 16% and 17% until 1993 when it hit 22% and continued to climb in the following years.
The Pew report shows that 69% of Democrats, and 75% of independents who favor the Democratic Party support cannabis legalization.
Republican support for legal marijuana was at 35% in 2015 but, according to the poll, is at 45% in 2018. Fifty-nine percent of Republican-leaning independents indicated that they favored legalization.
Multiple cannabis initiatives will be on November 2018 ballots, including Proposal 1 to legalize marijuana in Michigan, and Measure 3 in North Dakota which would legalize cannabis and automatically expunge criminal records.
