Poll: Majority of Americans support efforts to legalize marijuana

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email
• Copy Link

  Link Copied

Fifty-five percent of Americans support legislative efforts to legalize marijuana, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Those respondents would back similar laws to the ones on the books in Colorado and Washington state, where adults over the age of 21 are permitted to possess limited amounts of marijuana for personal use.

Almost a quarter of the country does not approve of laws to legalize marijuana, but would tolerate them. Those Americans (24 percent) would not actively seek the repeal of laws backed by state voters and state legislatures.

The numbers reflect a gradual sea change in the public’s views toward marijuana, and the laws that govern what federal law currently deems a “Schedule I” drug, worthy of the government’s strictest treatment.

“I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol,” President Barack Obama, who opposes legalization, said earlier this month in an interview with The New Yorker magazine. New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer said Monday on MSNBC that letting Colorado and Washington to experiment with new marijuana laws was a “good idea.”

And even a stalwart conservatives like Texas Gov. Rick Perry boasted last week of initiating a path toward decriminalization of marijuana in his state during remarks at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

Additional states could be poised to approve more lax marijuana laws come this fall. Florida’s Supreme Court on Monday approved a medical marijuana ballot initiative for this November, and petitioners in Washington, D.C., are hoping to add a legalization measure to the federal city’s ballot this fall as well.

Click here to read more.