Oct 19–
According to a new Gallup poll, 44% of Americans are now in favor of making marijuana legal and 54% are opposed.
The numbers in this story are broken down by region, party affiliation, and age. Westerners approve of legalizing marijuana by a clear majority (53%). Liberals are more likely to approve of legalization than conservatives. Neither of those really surprises me.
I noticed in this story that when you break it down by age, old people were less likely to be in favor of legalization (28%), the 50-64 crowd (*cough* baby boomers *cough*) only approved by 45%, and the under-50 crowd approved by 50%.
(How come the baby boomers only approve by 45%? Maybe the pot back then wasn’t as good as nostalgia advertises, huh?)
Are you thinking what I’m thinking? I’m shamelessly wondering how long it will take for the minority voting bloc to die off. I know. I’m terrible.
Hopefully that’s not what it would take for us to finally have some common sense cannabis freedom. The fact that cannabis is becoming more popular, or at least, not so reviled, is a good sign. I like good signs.
In fact, one of these stories suggests that
If public support were to continue growing at a rate of 1% to 2% per year, as it has since 2000, the majority of Americans could favor legalization of the drug in as little as four years.
But, you know, in the ’70s people thought for sure that pot would be legal any day now. They were so sure they quit working towards it, and the ’80s brought backlash. Please, this time let’s carry this thing all the way through.
Are you a consumer of cannabis? If so, please always remember that you are an ambassador for our plant. If you act like an asshole when you’re stoned you’re gonna make us all look bad.
But then, one of the big reasons that cannabis is popular is that you can smoke it and relax and mellow out; pot smokers don’t start a bunch of fights or go out and kill people out of the blue; and they don’t look all wasted and sick like meth heads or coke heads or crack heads.
I have met several men that smoke pot who say, “I smoke pot. If I drink alcohol, I get in fights.” Usually when I meet a man who says this, he’s the kinda guy who’s not even interested in alcohol. And I’ve gotta say, if a man knows that one habit will make him violent and one will make him mellow and he chooses the latter, doesn’t that sound like a wise choice on his part?
Yeah, I use marijuana for medical purposes. I smoke it for everybody else’s health. I get stoned and then I don’t want to choke the shit out of people.
Offstage Murmuring 