Most Americans are now saying: relax, unwind, it’s marijuana time.
According to a new Pew Research Center poll, the majority of Americans want to legalize marijuana — for the first time in polling history. Fifty-two percent favor legalizing marijuana compared to the 45 percent who are still against it.
The largest demographic calling for marijuana legalization is Millennials. A whopping 65 percent of young people now support making cannabis legal. That’s up from only 36 percent in 2008.
And it’s not just the young people who are changing their mind about legalizing marijuana. Half of Baby Boomers support it too, with the number of supporters doubling since 1994. Fifty-four percent of Generation X-ers also say they favor legalizing marijuana, compared to 10 years ago, when only 42 percent were for it.
Overall, support for legalizing marijuana has risen 11 percentage points since 2010. More than forty years ago, only 12 percent wanted to make marijuana legal.
Unsurprisingly, more people that ever also admitted to giving cannabis a try, with approximately half in all age groups admitting to sampling the illegal drug. As a whole. forty-eight percent of people surveyed said they had tried marijuana at least once.
Forty-seven percent of those who have used the drug in the past year said they used it “just for fun” while 30 percent said they used it for medical reasons. Twenty-three percent said they used it for both.
Once considered an extremely moral issue, now only 32 percent says using marijuana is morally wrong.
Support for enforcing marijuana laws has also declined. Proving to be a bipartisan issue, 67 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Democrats agree that the federal government shouldn’t waste money enforcing the law.
In November, both Washington and Colorado voted to legalize marijuana, undermining federal law. But if support continues to steadily rise, who knows? Maybe Americans will soon be free to smoke a joint or gobble down a pot brownie in all fifty states.
