x
  • Bookmark and ShareShare
  • Earn Points
    What's this?
Record number of Americans now say marijuana should be legal
The lowest support for legalization of pot came from those 65 and older.

By

Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience
Tue, Oct 18 2011 at 4:38 PM
 5

Related Topics:

Medicine
Marijuana plants sit on a shelf at a cannabis dispensery in Oakland

LEGAL ALL AROUND: Marijuana plants sit on a shelf at Coffeeshop Blue Sky cannabis dispensery July 22, 2009 in Oakland, Calif. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

About half of Americans believe that marijuana should be legalized, when questioned during an October Gallup poll. This is the highest percentage since Gallup started asking the question in 1969.
 
Marijuana comes from the cannabis plant and is used as a psychoactive drug and for medical purposes. However, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse's informational website, "Marijuana is the most commonly abused illicit drug in the United States."
 
The poll relied on telephone interviews with 1,005 adults ages 18 and over from Oct. 6 through Oct. 9. Fifty percent of those polled indicated that they support legalizing marijuana, while 46 percent do not, and 3 percent have no opinion on the subject.
 
The lowest support for legalization came from those 65 and older, only 31 percent of whom support blanket marijuana legalization. Liberals are twice as likely (at a high of 69 percent) to support legalization as conservatives (at 34 percent), and men are also more for legalization than women. [Trippy Tales: The History of 8 Hallucinogens]
 
Increasing acceptance
Results from the same poll taken last year revealed 46 percent of Americans supported legalization and 50 percent didn't. Until the 1990s, less than 20 percent of the American population answered the question "Do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal, or not?" with a no. Since then the percentage of Americans who support legalizing its use has increased about 10 percent every decade.
 
The increase in acceptance of the drug is probably linked to its increasing proliferation, say Gallup officials. Since 1997 the number of 12th graders who have used marijuana  has hovered between 45 and 49 percent. This age group, 18 to 29, is highly supportive of blanket marijuana legalization, with 62 percent of them saying it should be legal.
 
It also quotes the National Survey on Drug Use and Health from 2009, which states that "16.7 million Americans aged 12 or older used marijuana at least once in the month prior to being surveyed, an increase over the rates reported in all years between 2002 and 2008."
 
Medical marijuana
Marijuana is currently legal for "medical use" in 17 U.S. states, including California, Arizona and Maine, as well as in neighboring Canada. Medical uses include the treatment of glaucoma, nausea, headache, lack of appetite and pain.
 
Patients need to obtain a prescription for the drug from their doctors and buy the drug from "dispensaries." Since marijuana is still illegal under federal law, these dispensaries are often raided by federal law enforcement. A Gallup survey in 2010 asking specifically about marijuana legality for prescription use found that 70 percent of Americans favored its use to reduce "pain and suffering."
 
The Gallup poll was published online at Gallup.com on Monday.
 
You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on Twitter @microbelover. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.
 
Related on LiveScience:
 
Copyright 2011 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You might also like:

Join the conversation

Comments: 5
Sign in with one of these accounts to add your comment.
anonymous
cleshflesh Oct 23 2011 at 6:15 PM

so blazed.

|
starbuck
Starbuck Oct 22 2011 at 3:25 AM
Legalize it, regulate it, tax it. Just get it over with. No, it is not entirely benign and I am not at all convinced that it cures cancer. Smoking it is no better for the lungs or circulatory system than tobacco is. Teenagers whose brains are still growing and forming really shouldn't be using it. However, if you factor OUT prison sentences, I believe marijuana is far less damaging to our society than alcohol which is sold legally all over the place and accounts for a huge percentage of traffic
.... More
related deaths, other homicides, domestic violence cases, etc. While marijuana is certainly not the only drug being smuggled across our southern borders, it does account for a goodly amount of that activity and so also contributes to the blood bath the Mexican people are suffering at the hands of the drug cartels as well as murders on the US side of the border. It is beyond stupid for people to be dying in Mexico so that stoners in the US can get mellow and have the munchies. Legalize it, tax the living daylights out of it, add to the US coffers, spare social security, save Mexicans who are just trying to get through the day without running afoul of a shooting match..
|
dondig
dondig Oct 20 2011 at 1:31 PM
Prohibition of alcohol required an amendment to the constitution to be enacted, and another one to remove it: the prohibition of cannabis did not. Could this mean that this whole cannabis prohibition has been carried off all these years with no legal federal authority whatsoever? Could be. The doctors in the California Medical Association obviously realize that cannabis is non-toxic, unlike prohibition. Beyond that, it has been proven to kill cancer cells in lab tests without harming the healthy
.... More
cells present. http://www.gsalternative.com/2010/05/cannabinoids-kill-cancer/ Dave Triplett (Rick Simpson, and others) have used cannabis oil (topically) to cure melanoma as he shows in this short movie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tghUh4ubbg Please sign one or more of the White House petitions regarding the cannabis prohibition, go to this link: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petitions Select the drop-down menu for ‘search’, (on the little gray banner), type in the word ‘cannabis’, and you can review and sign a number of petitions, (there are at least ten at this point), and hopefully these can help put an end to this wasteful and harmful prohibition. President Obama could easily reschedule cannabis out of CSA schedule 1 by executive order. The prohibition on cannabis has been far more costly than just the tax dollars and lives ruined by incarceration. People are dying for lack of a non-toxic cancer cure, and one seems to be clearly within reach.
|
anonymous
Vincent Von Dudler Oct 19 2011 at 11:08 AM

The federal prohibition will soon end. Cannabis / hemp / marijuana will be left up to each state government it will be up to the states very shortly as to whether or not it will be legal for recreational use. In my opinion it's nearly harmless and should be available for all responsible adults in the same manner of alcohol.
Weigh in:
Here: http://pvox.co/CdiFqY
Here: wh.gov/gDQ

|
crisericson's picture
crisericson Oct 19 2011 at 10:29 AM

Please! Hurry & click & sign the petition http://wh.gov/gP1
to END MARIJUANA PROHIBITION at the White House, 'We the
People' Issues. "Demand an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
to End Marijuana, Marihuana, Cannabis and Hemp Prohibition."
President Obama allows Adults and children age 13 and up
to sign petitions. http://wh.gov/gP1 is the lucky 13th
marijuana petiton and it is an Umbrella for all the others,
covering all marijuana, hemp and cannabis issues.

|

EDITORS' PICKS

tease painting

line

tease devil's kettle

line

tease calories

Advertisement

NEWSLETTER

Mother Nature. Delivered
Advertisement