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Marijuana
A majority of both American and Canadian adults support marijuana legalization, according to a new Angus Reid public opinion survey. According to the poll, the people of Canada are slightly more supportive of marijuana legalization than their neighbors to the south.
The survey found that 57 percent of Canadians support the legalization of marijuana, while only 39 percent oppose the idea. By comparison, 54 percent Americans support marijuana legalization, while 42 percent want it to remain illegal.
In both counties the generational divide on the issue indicates support for legalization is likely to grow. It is adults over the age of 55 that tend to be the least supportive of legalization.
Although the poll found that two-thirds of adults in both nations believe the “War on Drugs” has been a failure, that has not led people to support the legalization of other drugs besides marijuana. Support for legalization of other hard drugs remains around only 10 percent in both nations.
Angus Reid has found slightly higher levels of support for marijuana legalization in the United State than other pollsters. When Gallup polled the issue in 2011, it found 50 percent of Americans think marijuana should be legal, while 46 percent think it should remain illegal; but indications are that support for the legalization has likely grown in the past year.
Photo by Dank Depot under Creative Commons License.
2 Comments
“..adults over the age of 55 that tend to be the least supportive of legalization.”
As a 64-year old, this is always one demographic stat that boggles my mind.
I mean…..we are the generation that ushered in the Beatles, the generation that got drafted and sent to Nam, the generation that cheered when the establishment president Nixon was impeached, etc., etc. My God, we’ve known from teen-hood that reefer is relatively harmless in comparison to nicotine, alcohol, Big Pharma prescription drugs, etc., etc.
I always wonder just who the hell these public opinion surveys are relying on for their stats. These bastards should show up at my door and I’ll give ‘em stats based on my life’s lessons. (Hard earned life’s lessons, I might add, especially relative to alcohol, lawfully and readily available.)
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I’m 65, and yes we were the start of this social change.
But those of us who went that route were not the majority of our generation. Like the rest of America, we were divided.
And there is a tendency for people to drift into more conservative beliefs as they get older.
Didn’t work that way for me, but I know old friends who have.
Life goes on, people change. And so do maladaptive laws based on lies.
Faster would be good, though.