The overwhelming majority of Americans are opposed to current federal marijuana law.
That’s the big takeaway from a new poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy and released by Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), the country’s most prominent anti-legalization group.
The poll took a unique approach to a legalization survey. Instead of asking people if they support legalization and giving them a binary yes-or-no choice, it asked 1,000 registered voters about several options for federal marijuana policy: keeping current policy (which prohibits possessing and using cannabis for any purpose), legalizing “physician-supervised medical use,” decriminalizing marijuana by removing criminal penalties for use and allowing medical use but prohibiting sales, and legalizing the commercial production, use and sale of marijuana for recreational use.
Only 16 percent of Americans favored keeping the current policy. About 29 percent backed only medical legalization, 5 percent backed decriminalization and 49 percent backed full legalization. The remaining 1 percent were not sure.
Top image: © trongnguyen | Adobe Stock
