Americans are in favor of making marijuana legal, and that most people don’t believe it is harmful or a gateway drug.
Could we be seeing the effects of anti-pot propaganda finally wearing off? Fifty-five percent of people think that the use of marijuana should be made legal and 54 percent think that sales should be made legal as well. These numbers are dramatically higher than they were from other surveys over the past 40 years, and have dramatically spiked since 2010. The percentage of Americans in favor of making marijuana use legal rose 25 percent from 1973 to 2012, then jumped another 12 percent from last summer until now.
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Those that seemed to oppose these questions most (big surprise) were people that are either over 65, Republican/Conservative, from the South or from rural areas. All other demographics stayed fairly consistent around the 55 to 60 percent range for those that agree with legalization.
The same trend of a more tolerant America continued with the questions regarding the effects of marijuana. While the numbers are still fairly split down the middle, the majority of Americans are realizing what stoners did years ago; pot is generally not physically, psychologically or mentally harmful, and it is not a gateway drug.
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While all these numbers show a dramatic change, the biggest shift came from the “morally wrong” section of the survey. During this segment, survey participants were asked if certain actions were morally wrong. The response that smoking marijuana is morally wrong was only 35 percent, which is a big drop from the 70 percent a similar Time poll found in 1987.
This section also had a few non-pot related questions, which were fun to take a look at. Americans are more comfortable looking at porn, drinking alcohol, and having abortions than ever before, but are less okay with tax evasion and extramarital affairs — good job USA. Only a few more years and this country will be figured out.
The survey was conducted by telephone by ORC International, from January 3-5, with 1,010 adult Americans. The overall sampling error is plus or minus 3 percent.
