A new poll finds two-thirds of Americans oppose current federal laws prohibiting marijuana, with support for national legalization twice as high as support for nationwide prohibition.
Polling data compiled by The Economist and YouGov.com finds that 45 percent of Americans believe the federal government should legalize the adult use of marijuana nationally, while 21 percent say the decision whether or not to legalize marijuana should be left primarily up to the individual states, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) reports.
Only 20 percent of Americans support a federal ban on adult marijuana use. (RELATED: Tech Giant Gets Behind Republican Congresswoman's Fight to Decriminalize Marijuana)
Among six issues polled, marijuana tied with same-sex marriage for the most support for national legalization, ahead of abortion, physician-assisted suicide, prostitution and automatic weapons.
“While a plurality of Americans favors the idea of the federal government mandating the states to adopt marijuana legalization, such an outcome remains entirely unlikely in our federalist system,” said NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano in a statement.
Rather, issues pertaining to marijuana legalization have historically been decided, and continue to be decided, on a state-by-state basis and the best — and most practical way the federal government can respond — is to take steps to undo the past harms of federal prohibition while leaving states free to adopt their own policy alternatives,” said Armentano.
“Several pieces of marijuana reform legislation currently pending in Congress, such as The MORE Act and The States Reform Act, seek to deschedule marijuana from the U.S. Controlled Substances Act – thereby providing state governments the ability to either legalize or criminalize marijuana absent federal interference,” NORML reports.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Think this country is in a mess now? If the whole country can do pot it won’t be long before all drugs will be demanded to be made legal. Then all that’s left is to let children decide if they want to do drugs too since everything else seems to be headed in that direction. The new generations are showing how useless they want their lives to be.