Actual picture of SSS after reading this poll.
Story Highlights
- Majority favors legal marijuana for third consecutive year
- Younger generations more supportive than older generations
- Older generations more supportive than they were in the past
PRINCETON, N.J. — A majority of Americans continue to say marijuana use should be legal in the United States, with 58% holding that view, tying the high point in Gallup’s 46-year trend.
Americans’ support for legal marijuana has steadily grown over time. When Gallup first asked the question, in 1969, 12% of Americans thought marijuana use should be legal, with little change in two early 1970s polls. By the late 1970s, support had increased to about 25%, and held there through the mid-1990s. The percentage of Americans who favored making use of the drug legal exceeded 30% by 2000 and was higher than 40% by 2009.
Over the past six years, support has vacillated a bit, but averaged 48% from 2010 through 2012 and has averaged above the majority level, 56%, since 2013.
The higher level of support comes as many states and localities are changing, or considering changing, their laws on marijuana. So far, four states and the District of Columbia have made recreational use of marijuana legal, and Ohio voters are set to decide a ballot initiative that would do the same this coming Election Day. The topic has been an issue on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, and several candidates have expressed a willingness to let states set their own marijuana laws even though federal law prohibits marijuana use.
Young Adults Consistently More Supportive of Legal Marijuana
Gallup has previously reported that two of the biggest differentiators of Americans’ opinions on legal marijuana are age and party identification. Younger Americans, Democrats and independents are the most likely of major demographic and political groups to favor legalizing use of the drug, while Republicans and older Americans are least likely to do so.
Younger Americans have always shown the most support of any age group for making marijuana legal, but this has grown from 20% of 18- to 34-year-olds in 1969 to 71% of those in the same age group today. But even older age groups today are more likely to favor legal marijuana than the comparable age groups in the past. For example, 35% of senior citizens today (aged 65 and older) are in favor of legalization, compared with 4% of senior citizens in 1969. Among all age groups, the increase in support has been proportionately greater over the last 15 years than it was between any of the earlier time periods.
These patterns by age indicate that one reason Americans are more likely to support legal marijuana today than they were in the past is because newer generations of adults, who are much more inclined to favor use of the drug, are replacing older generations in the population who were much less inclined to want it to be legalized.
But the increase in support nationwide is also a function of attitude change within generations of Americans over the course of their adult lifespans. Gallup’s historical data allow for a look at how views on marijuana legalization have changed over time among independent samples of those in the same birth cohorts. For example, Americans who are aged 65 through 79 today — born between 1936 and 1950 — are more supportive of making marijuana legal in 2015 than those born in the same years were 15, 30 and 46 years ago. This birth cohort’s support has increased from 20% in 1969 to 29% in 2000/2001, and is 40% today.
Americans born from 1951 through 1965 and from 1966 through 1980 are also more likely to favor legalizing marijuana than they were 15 years ago, with support growing a little more than 20 percentage points within each of these birth cohorts over that time. That exceeds the increases in support for older birth cohorts over the same time.
The oldest Americans, those born in 1935 or earlier, have shown far less change in their attitudes about marijuana over their life spans. The near-doubling of support between 1969 and 1985, from 8% to 15%, reflects the dying off of the oldest Americans in that birth cohort during that time period as much as it does attitude change among those from that birth cohort who were still living.
Implications
Americans’ support for legalizing marijuana is the highest Gallup has measured to date, at 58%. Given the patterns of support by age, that percentage should continue to grow in the future. Younger generations of Americans have been increasingly likely to favor legal use of marijuana as they entered adulthood compared with older generations of Americans when they were the same age decades ago. Now, more than seven in 10 of today’s young adults support legalization.
But Americans today — particularly those between 35 and 64 — are more supportive of legal marijuana than members of their same birth cohort were in the past. Now senior citizens are alone among age groups in opposing pot legalization.
These trends suggest that state and local governments may come under increasing pressure to ease restrictions on marijuana use, if not go even further like the states of Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Alaska in making recreational marijuana use completely legal.
Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics.
Survey Methods
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Oct. 7-11, 2015, with a random sample of 1,015 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.
Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.
View survey methodology, complete question responses and trends.
They call it dope for good reason. Probably a close correlation to Democrat voters too who will get what they deserve.
I wish people had as much of a drive to work and produce, as they do for getting high.
Simple legalizing marijuana isn’t what tales place, creating an industry in it is.
One is good from the standpoint of liberty but the other is not from the point of social and cultural stability and health.
Legalizing something for the people using is is one thing, creating commerce in it on an industrial scale is another.
Kaneh-bosem was an ingredient in the anointing oil.
So people want to smoke pot…
I dont give a rats ass.
But some method has to be in effect for DUI of kanehbosom. Ocular pressure meters maybe.
Considering that marijuana has a longer history of association with human society than alcohol one must consider the prohibition of the plant to be the most successful PR campaign in history.
There is no rational argument in favor of prohibition of marijuana that cannot be more appropriately used as an argument against alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, a number of OTC medications, a number of prescription medications.
Considering that the first criminal law in the US regarding marijuana was passed in Utah – when in October 1915 the state legislature decided that all religious prohibitions were to be enshrined in criminal law – dope became illegal, so much for separation of church and state.
Further attacks on the plant were based on:
1.) Fear of Mexicans – the plant was used widely in Mexico and seen as a part of Mexican culture, with the US/Mexico turmoil from the 19th century still fresh in many minds, prohibition was often seen as a way of saying ‘You’re not welcome here’
2.) Fear of substitution – not just from the alcohol and tobacco industries but the plant also posed a threat to the cotton and soft-wood lumber industries as growing hemp crops was more efficient than either. (Interesting side note: Although industrial hemp CANT get you high, it is still illegal – go figure)
3.) Presumption of harm – From the PR campaigns of the time, along with commentary from highly respected members of society (based not on scientific fact) the people began to truly believe that the plant would lead to the destruction of society through murder, rape, insanity. Some of the actual phrases used:
Mrihuana – weed with roots in hell – weird orgies, wild parties
The official truth: If you smoke it… you will kill people
Assassin of youth: Marihuana (complete with a drawing of daemon silhouettes dancing around a bonfire in front of a Minotaur)
Marijuana: What will your mother say when she finds your corpse?
Marihuana – the plant from hell! + Cannabis can kill!
And just to preempt the ‘well opium/heroin is just a plant, cocaine is just a plant’ comeback.
No, those are not plants, they are refined and chemically treated to produce the drug. Coca leaves do not contain cocaine – it must be refined; poppies do not contain heroin – it must be refined.
If you really want to support your argument – try to figure out how many people have overdosed by eating a bowl of poppy seeds, good luck.
demographics = destiny
A freedom issue. I guess we could continue with the whole heads up our asses thing.Pretending millions of people are not smoking the stuff. From the first page of the bible and as a herb,Much better than man made pain killers. Pot just isn’t the big boogeyman it has been made out to be.
It is like saying a person who drinks two beers is a raging alcoholic and should be locked up.
Old stupid people who never smoked pot are usually the ones complaining about pot. Just make it legal for people to have in small amounts and for them to be able to grow small amounts.
For the love of God, quit trying to legislate morality! Who cares who uses pot. Why the hell don’t you look at the destruction of the currency. That will affect far more people in a negative way than any kind of so called drug use. People are oblivious to what is going on. Purely Pathetic!
I was gonna write an opinion on this, but then I got high.
Over half a century has passed since the first time I smoked it. Yes, the experience led me to try LSD and DMT, but it was no “gateway drug” with respect to other substances. The combined experiences convinced me that there’s much more to consciousness than we experience in our everyday “reality” and that conviction has remained intact. Is it an experience everyone should have? My inclination is to say no, but it’s not for me or imho anyone else to determine. You pays your money and you takes your chances, just like with so many other experiences. Me, I don’t want someone else telling me how I’m supposed to live my life so long as I do no harm to others. I believe the evidence is that this particular substance is less likely to harm others than alcohol and there is no justification whatsoever for outlawing it.
Fuck you Siddell, I’ll bet you’ve never even tried it, so WTF do YOU know?
@Big Stupid: William Randolph Hearst the newspaper magnate had a lot to do with pot prohibition, because he owned thousands of acres of trees and didn’t want any competition from hemp.
Meantime, our military protects the opium crop in Afghanistan and that’s primarily why we are still engaged.
Those that claim to revere the Constitution but also support national prohibition of marijuana or any other drug, please tell me where in that document the Federal government is delegated such a power?
Notice when the public opinion went up dramatically? It was after the Choom Prez was elected.
Where is the graph showing how the public has been manipulated and choreographed on the other ‘hot topics’ like the LGBT ‘rights’, gay marriage, and gun control.
I will wager that public opinion has dramatically changed on these issues in a very similar fashion.
It isn’t a coincidence.
SSS here on my wife’s tablet. An excruciating experience.
If I were on my laptop, I’dq blast the bejessus out of you pro-marijuana heathens, but it’s taken me 15 minutes to type this. On another subject, I’m on a vacation from my vacation.
BigStupid said:
“No, those are not plants, they are refined and chemically treated to produce the drug. Coca leaves do not contain cocaine – it must be refined; poppies do not contain heroin – it must be refined.”
Great name!
You’re wrong about opium poppies. Put three or four slanted cuts on each green seed pod and collect the white latex as it dries and you’ve got heroin! You can do that twice to each pod. It can be refined to increase potency but that is not needed. The dried seed pod itself will get you high as fuck…….high..as..fuck! Been there. Done that. Matter of fact, ten hours after drinking opium tea was the only time I ever wanted a high to end. Trust me, when your high outlasts your tolerance for being high, you’re gonna have a bad day! Too much of that and you’ll die.
It’s been a long time, about 45 years, since I experimented with marijuana, which I used perhaps 3 times in my youth. Never liked it, because I found I just didn’t like being high any better than I liked being drunk.And it was NOT a gateway drug for me- I wasn’t tempted to try other more powerful substances, since I had the evidence of the harm they do right before my eyes. I lost a number of young friends to the heavy drugs that were to be had at almost any party you went to 1967-1975. Many foolish young people got culled from the gene pool in that era. At least with the dope, there was no hangover- none of the slamming headaches liquor gives me, and I notice that people high on dope tend to behave somewhat better than people drunk on liquor. They don’t throw up, they don’t cause quite as many accidents, and they are far less prone to violence. While dopers merely disgust me, drunks scare the hell out of me. I can’t believe the social effect of marijuana could conceivably be any worse than that of liquor.
The worst thing you can say about dope is that it kills parties because users are incapable of carrying on a coherent conversation, and will sit there and mindlessly giggle, while people who use the crap habitually become fat, and extremely stupid and disheveled. At least they’re less likely to haul off and punch you because they thought you looked at them the wrong way, as drunks will.
Just as liquor prohibition made the Mafia wealthy and powerful, drug prohibition has greatly enriched the meanest, most violent criminal cartels in history, and by doing so, has corrupted our politics and law enforcement, and turned gigantic swaths of our major cities into war zones. The more money and lives we spend fighting this no-win War on Drugs, the more criminal violence, corruption of law enforcement, and most of all, the more drug use we get. I doubt that there would be half as many users as there are if it weren’t for prohibition, which gives the stuff a glamorous “forbidden fruit” appeal that attracts many young people who otherwise wouldn’t bother with the stuff, and I suspect that once MJ has been legal for a decade or so, that use will drop off substantially, just as people are growing bored with dropping their money on the floor in casinos.
Chicago- “while people who use the crap habitually become fat, and extremely stupid and disheveled.”
Making asinine statements endangers your credibility.
Sorry, ottomik, but I judge from the evidence before my eyes, mainly (ex) friends who are heavy users.
Sorry, but I’m right. EVERY habitual dope smoker I know, who are mostly people in their 50s and 60s who have been toking for decades, is a fat, brainless, confused loser with a disheveled mind and equally disheveled house, car, and life. I’m sitting here thinking of a woman, once talented and dynamic, who became my ex-friend last year, and her increasing laziness, paranoia, and all-round silliness and lunacy. Here is a woman who once worked hard with great creativity and drive, who now is either picking her belly button lint in a therapist’s office, or lying on her bed toking dope. Her apt with its beautiful antiques is an overstuffed pig-stye, with crap piled helter-skelter all over the place, and she has become such a hoarder that she has 3 storage lockers filled with crap. She has alienated almost every friend she has by going into rages and accusing them of stealing from her, typical dope-head paranoia. And, since dope gives you a powerful urge to munch and graze, she has balooned up to 200 lbs. Other people I’ve met who toke this crap habitually become lazy, fat, unmotivated, sloppy, and incapable of conversation. They habitually lose crap, dropping their wallets on the street and forgetting to pay bills, while spending $400 a month on this rot.
I will continue to defend their right to do it, because if you want to ruin your life, you have the right to do it. Go ahead, smoke your dope, get drunk, drop your mortgage payment and your kids’ food money in a casino, whatever. It’s your life and your right. But just because you have the “right” to do something, doesn’t make it a good thing to do. Just don’t inflict the consequences on the rest of us.
I’m inclined to agree with Chi9 about habitual marijuana users, although I don’t know any well and in the village where I live there are only a few that I know of, funny enough all quite thin. NO intoxicant should be used habitually if at all, given the inevitable deleterious effects. Past acquaintance with habitual users (long ago now) of marijuana led me to conclude that laziness and fuzzy-mindedness were the likely consequences and while I enjoy the occasional lazy day as much as the next guy, I wouldn’t want to have a lazy week. I don’t put the entheogens in the same category as “heavy” drugs, but they are not to be played with. LSD left me with no doubt that there is more to consciousness than what we experience on a daily basis and made me determined to find out if it were possible to enter that state of consciousness without the use of any “booster” substance: it is. These substances can be of use in the beginning of an exploration of consciousness, but repetition of use can quickly become counterproductive. As for marijuana, let those who wish to use it grow their own rather than purchase it.
Marijuana is illegal because Big Pharm and Big Oil and Big Cotton didn’t like competition. Plus the Prohibition cops needed something to do so the Feds and States wouldn’t have to shrink their workforces and control over us.
Cannabinoids are incredibly healing substances that have SAVED people’s lives with NO ill/side effects. The research on these were effectively stopped with the war that was waged by the men in power and have only recently been able to be studied again. SSS and others would like that to stop again. If nature can cure you, but pharms will kill you, then obviously the only “right” thing to do is take your painful death like a real man. Even if your 5.
@Chicago, you seem to blame the pot for your friend, but then throw in the therapist, I would guess that she has just used the pot to try and fix her life/deal with it. Exactly like the MILLIONS that take toxins like Paxil, Zoloft and Xanax, except without the devastating to your health ‘side’ effects. I’ll even bet she is on one or more of those “legal” mental nightmares. Still messed up though, isn’t she? Don’t blame the substances dear, it is your former FRIEND that is 100% at fault.
ANYTHING, including food and water, is detrimental to humans if abused. And there will always be people that feel they “need” the abuse/behavior. We humans have strange coping mechanisms especially in a world as artificial and messed up as ours is. We blame substances instead of people, but then we love to punish the people even as we teach ourselves it is not our fault. Any wonder we are so messed up here?
KB wants more cops and judges with more power, meanwhile there are people (upwards of 25% KB) EVERYWHERE driving on LEGAL substances that alter you MORE than LSD and opium. It is 100% LEGAL to drive on Oxycontin, and it is one helluva mindbending, dangerous, unhealthy substance. I could go on and on and on with the scary substances that it is completely LEGAL to drive on. Hell, they even let bimbos and mentally retarded get licenses. You shouldn’t be afraid of the driver that is high/drunk, you should be cautious of ALL drivers.
Why do we INSIST on creating crimes where none exist? Drunk driving laws don’t stop drunks from killing us and there is growing evidence that jackbooted, government mandated, cops are a DIRECT threat to our lives. Why don’t we outlaw cops? Hell, MEDICAL mistakes, and outright medically mandated poisons, kill more Americans than all the cops, illegal drugs and lightning strikes put together. Don’t see you guys wanting to outlaw doctors and hospitals!
IF you are messed up – from ANYTHING – and you recklessly kill someone, then you SHOULD be made to work and pay for the loss to the family. Instead, we want MORE laws and MORE cops, so that the victims get NOTHING, and 100% of us dumbass taxpayers have to work harder to pay for the punishment. Ah, smell the safety and justice of it all.
Until we get this messed up notion out of our heads that you can regulate stupid and insane, it is never going to hope to get better. We will just all suffer more as the very thing that makes us human – free will – is slowly but surely regulated and medicated out of existence.
There are responsible people, and there are not. There is actual justice, and then there are man made rules. You cannot use rules to make the irresponsible, responsible, nor can you use rules to get justice. The real world just doesn’t work that way.
A drunk hit my house. He trashed my daughter’s swingset, he ruined one of my garden boxes and he tore the gas meter off the side of my house. Because I wrote down his plate number, the cops “caught” him sleeping in his garage.
He then went to court, got thousands in fines, paid a few hundred in “driver responsibility,” had to make a bunch of “counselors” richer and lost his license. I got exactly NOTHING for his crime. And if I stand back and add up the REAL costs of his punishment, it actually ends up costing ME (and you) THOUSANDS.
How is that justice?
Before the drunk driving law bullshit, I could have written down his plate, the cop would have looked it up and told me who to sue/talk to. Then I could have either gone to court, or not, either way I would have received the justice I felt right as I was the victim. NOT the State.
Laws do NOT stop stupid people from being stupid, with over 80,000 federal laws and counting, with hundreds of thousands of new regulations being put into place EVERY year, if this way worked then WHY ISN’T EVERYTHING ALREADY FIXED?
Riddle me that believers in morality cops, law and justice systems. Just, exactly, at what magical Utopian point do all these laws, regulations and brutal cops provide justice for the real victims?
When we reach 1 billion rules/laws? 1 trillion? When 1 out of every 2 people are either judges, politicians or cops? When?
I have been dying to find that out for well over 35 years now. When will it all finally work?
Soon, I hope, because I do not believe our society can take much more of the control freaks without fracturing and going into balls to the wall anarchy. How funny is that? We are afraid so we control, the control gets out of control and thus fractures us into a worse spot than we started from.
I should just delete this and move on. I’ll never convince a true believer that their Utopian plans are based on quicksand and impossible. Doesn’t matter how many facts, how rational, how many results, just doesn’t matter.
Laws keep us “safe” and when you get murdered it is obviously because the “right” law wasn’t in place. We better get on that, Utopia awaits.
freedom to choose whatever is allowed is no freedom at all..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1x5Fb60vyc
NATIONAL CANNABISATION
Scandal in my high school at recess
I was fourgué hashish adulterated
Here I am bent to the infirmary
Ill because of this crap
Oh no, no, that’s not good hashish
The teachers say, “it’s not our responsibility
Selling shit is subject to an agreement
The rector authorizes the free traffic
For peace of ethnic groups ”
Oh no, no, that’s not good hashish
The headmaster was bugged
The drug is guaranteed by the prefect
The prefect is to ensure the good stuff
Y has a burr on the side of the customs
Oh no, no, that’s not good hashish
The parents were angry
They threatened the Ministry
Our children deserve good cannabis
We will not let them smoke lilies
Oh no, no, that’s not good hashish
The Minister made a whole drama
Because it touches on the program
There are doctrinal failures
Within the National Education
Oh no, no, that’s not good hashish
We looked error or illegality
But dealers are now reported
For policies is strategic
We need drugs to control the goyim
Oh no, no, that’s not good hashish
An order is signed soon
Prohibiting the bad shit for children
You can not smoke weed with too yucky
There is the corruption in high places
Oh no, no, that’s not good hashish
The president himself, he not emerge unscathed
Because of an old stock traded in Morocco
We should all smoking French bio
Instead chocolate time Pasqua
Oh no, no, that’s not good hashish
Everything is organized for the seal at recess
Service The women dealent cannabis
Found dope more easily than cigarettes
Even the cop manning pulls the chichon
Oh no, no, that’s not good hashish
The thing is allowed if you have any gumption
Cannabis puts everyone in his pocket
It’s good for morale it makes them morons
It is a mental AIDS, everyone is Charlie
Control isn’t freedom. EVER.
The two “most important” commandments, love God, love your neighbors.
Your control freak nature is evil.
You don’t have to believe me, just go forth and find those humans that suffer because of the punishments/laws and then get ready to tell God how wrong he was to create the plant and allow free will.
I pray you see the error of your heart before you are called home. I send you love. Love and prayer and love and prayer.
I do believe that is the only way this world could hope to be fixed. You think differently. Your way hasn’t worked for over 10,000 years. I’m sure it will just take another rule to make it work for us in these times.
Love and prayer, love and prayer. Serenity now.
Chicago- “Sorry, but I’m right. ” Don’t be, I am sorry you have so many fat, stupid, lazy, stoned friends. Your enlightened totalitarianism has provided me with some much needed understanding. We need more, harsher laws, to deal with all of the fat, lazy, and stupid stoners.
I know, lets implement the Death Penalty for getting stoned, at least then the State will eliminate all of your fat, lazy, stupid friends, and save you the anguish of ‘breaking’ up with them.
Ottomik, if you read my post correctly, you would know that I do not advocate laws of any sort to deal with fat, lazy stoners.
I personally support repealing every law against purely personal behaviors that harm no one but yourself, and, as I stated, I don’t believe that the social consequences of legalizing MJ AND all other harmful drugs could conceivably be worse than the widespread use of alcohol, a substance that has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in car accidents (it’s responsible for at least half of all traffic fatalities), but in shootings and general domestic violence. It has wrecked families (like the one I grew up in), careers, and lives uncounted. But alcohol prohibition wrecked more….. and alcohol is also enjoyed by millions of moderate drinkers who lead decent, productive lives, as is MJ by the ordinary weekend dope smoker.
I am simply stating that the fact that you have a RIGHT to use it, doesn’t make it good. I notice that people tend to think that if something is “bad” in their judgement, they have to make a law against it, or if it is “good”, they have to use the law to compel others to use it or do it. Exercise and eating a lean diet, for example, are “good” things to do, but that does not mean that I have a right to force other people to do those things.
We’ve done more harm by legislating and regulating personal behaviors, than the behaviors themselves could ever do, and we’ve probably inspired more young people to take up bad behaviors by making laws against them, than would ever have participated if we’d just let people the hell alone.
I think someone needs a cigarette…..you go gurl.
Chi- I agree, and I knew that was your general disposition. I am not arguing that marijuana used chronically(or infrequently) is ‘good’. I know there are many chronic users who are not fat, lazy, and stupid, in a variety of professions, functioning marijuholics. I was just suggesting your contention that ALL chronic users are fat, lazy, and stupid is simply untrue.
I do appreciate your Libertarian position on Legalization all the same.