America Wants Legal Marijuana More Than Ever Before. Catch Up, Joe Biden.
Gallup shows 68 percent supporting legalization.
The extremely pro-marijuana results in last week's ballot measures were not an anomaly—and to judge from current poll numbers, they shouldn't be a surprise.
A Gallup poll released this morning shows that marijuana legalization is more popular than it has ever been, with 68 percent of all Americans supporting it.
Support for legalization crossed the 50 percent threshold in 2012 and hasn't been back since. These numbers mean that marijuana legalization polls as well as same-sex marriage: About two-thirds of the country support each.
Demographically, majority support of legalization runs across all age groups, even those over 65. Opposition is still slightly greater than support among Republicans and among those who say they attend church weekly—but even among those groups, the anti-legalization position is a mere 52 percent. (Republicans actually crossed the 50 percent line in 2018, but they just dipped back down.)
Some government leaders resist, but even that may be starting to crumble. In Montana, one state lawmaker—Rep. Derek Skees (R–Kalispell)—said before Election Day that he would draft a bill overturning marijuana legalization if the voters passed it at the poll. When it passed overwhelmingly, with 57 percent of the vote, he dropped the plan. (Even so, opponents of marijuana legalization are now suing to reverse the new law.)
President-elect Joe Biden supports decriminalization, expunging the records of people convicted of marijuana possession, and shifting marijuana off of Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. And yet he still opposes full legalization. This poll needs to be waiting on his desk in the Oval Office, along with a reminder of how he brags about evolving toward supporting same-sex marriage before President Barack Obama formally declared his support.