Marijuana: The new pro-weed majority

Before long, marijuana will finally be “legal everywhere in the U.S.,” said Nick Gillespie in Time.com. For the first time, a Gallup poll has found, a majority of Americans support the full legalization of marijuana. In fact, 58 percent now favor legal weed—a stunning 10-point increase in just a year. It’s “the latest indicator that the federal war on weed, which officially began in 1937, is finally drawing to a close.” What’s amazing is “just how quickly public opinion on this is changing,” said Kevin Drum in MotherJones.com. Only 31 percent favored legalization in 2000. At the current rate of increase, support for legal marijuana will hit 65 percent in three years. Two states, Colorado and Washington, have already passed voter initiatives legalizing weed for recreational use. Add it all up, and “marijuana will probably be legal in most of the country by 2020.”

So who will be the first national politician to come out in favor of legal weed? said Nate Cohn in NewRepublic.com. Hillary Clinton, in particular, could win over young, independent male voters in 2016 by taking a bold stand on marijuana legalization. But don’t count on it. A third of Democrats and two thirds of Republicans still oppose legalizing pot. For the next few years, politicians will continue to worry that “there are more votes to be lost than won by supporting marijuana.” The legalization movement may also run into some setbacks, said Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Prospect.org. The first legal marijuana shops will open in Colorado and Washington next year. If there’s a “highly publicized misstep in either state”—such as a surge in adolescents coming to school stoned or glassy-eyed drivers crashing into trees—Americans could quickly turn against legalization.

History suggests that won’t happen, said Adam Nagourney in The New York Times. When California legalized medical marijuana 17 years ago, critics predicted the state would see “increased lawlessness and a drastic rise in other drug use.” Those warnings have proved unfounded. Instead, research suggests marijuana has become an alcohol substitute for younger people. Many law-enforcement officials still worry about rising rates of marijuana dependency and younger teens regularly using the drug. But Mark Kleiman, a marijuana policy expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the state’s experience indicates that “legalizing cannabis is obviously a good idea. Alcohol is so much more of a problem than cannabis has ever been.”

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