First Time: A Plurality Of Americans Supports Legal Marijuana

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​There’s more good news for supporters of marijuana legalization. For the first time ever, Rasmussen Reports’ poll of American adults has a plurality supporting legalization: 43 percent think marijuana should be legalized, while 42 percent think is should remain against the law.

Almost two-thirds of Americans — even those who are against it — now believe that marijuana will be legalized within the next 10 years.

A “plurality” in polling terms simply means that more people are in favor of pot legalization than are opposed to it.

That’s quite an improvement from a year ago, when a similar Rasmussen poll found 41 percent supporting legalization and 49 percent opposed, reports policy analyst Jon Walker at FireDogLake.
“It is possible that Prop 19, by bringing the debate to the forefront, is starting to noticeably move national opinions by forcing people to take some time to actually think about the issue,” Walker said.

The entire zeitgeist around pot legalization has changed. What used to be widely viewed as an impossible pipe dream is now viewed by a solid majority as an inevitability — in the near future.

Americans Believe Legalization Is Inevitable
A commanding 65 percent believe it is at least “somewhat likely” that marijuana will be legalized in the United States in the next 10 years, according to the poll. Just 28 percent do not expect this to happen.
Those numbers include 29 percent who say it is “very likely” cannabis will be legal in the next decade, and just 5 percent who say it is “not at all likely.”
“It is important to point out that the subset of American adults who actually vote tends to be older and less supportive of legalization than the general public,” Walker said, “so we probably have not yet reached the point where a plurality of the all important ‘likely voters’ supports legalization, but at the current rate that point could be reached soon.”
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