America’s conservative attitude toward marijuana is going up in smoke, according to a new survey.
The Time/CNN poll revealed that 72 percent of Americans now feel that people arrested with small amounts of marijuana should not do any jail time, while just 19 percent favored sending pot smokers up the river.
Nearly 60 percent of Americans still want marijuana possession to be considered a criminal offense – but 34 percent now favor complete legalization of the drug.
A survey in 1986 found that 78 percent opposed legalization while only 18 percent supported it.
The new poll also offered good news to activists and lawmakers who are calling for the legalization of medical marijuana, as 80 percent of those surveyed said they favored dispensing pot for medicinal purposes.
The medical marijuana movement has gained enormous support in recent years. At least 19 states either allow it or have reduced sentences to virtually nothing.
Those states have been riding a wave of increasing marijuana use throughout the general public, the survey showed. Forty-seven percent of those polled said they smoked pot at least once, a 50-percent increase over a 1983 survey, when only 31 percent admitted that they’d toked.
The Time story said the growing liberal attitude toward pot comes from the fact that “Baby Boomers are getting older, and there are fewer older people around who think marijuana and heroin are the same thing.”
The issue of decriminalizing marijuana is on the front-burner in several states where initiatives are on ballots next week.
It is also being pushed in New York by Tom Golisano, the Independence Party candidate for governor. New York passed a medical marijuana law in 1980, but it has never been implemented.