I wonder whether politicians ever review the polls because if they would, they would find that by simply saying, “I’m pro legalization of cannabis”, they would instantly garner a ton of support for their political campaigns. For the longest time, cannabis users have been stigmatized as “second class citizens”, “lazy deadbeats” that don’t contribute to society. Unfortunately, this would include roughly half of the population as in most polls it reveals that roughly 1 in 2 people have tried cannabis in the past. This isn’t to say that they are all stoners, it simply means that more than half of the US population favors some form of legalization.
In fact, according to some polls we’re talking about 70% of the population is on board of some sort of general cannabis reform. What makes it even more compelling is that the support for cannabis reform is not a partisan thing either.
According to Law and Crime – a recent poll shed light on the non-partisan issue about cannabis legalization;
The poll brought to light some interesting statistics, 54 percent of the Republicans along with 68 percent of Democrats, and 62 percent with a third-party or “other” political view, voted in support of the National legalization of marijuana policy.
Additionally, nearly half of the respondents said that “federal regulation” ought to be implemented while only 32 supported the “states” approach. The survey had a +/- margin of error of 3% and utilized a sample group of a 1000 people representing the US population.
A recent Gallup poll echoed this sentiment,
70 percent of adult Americans find no harm in smoking cannabis and consider it a morally acceptable activity, while 50 percent of the Adult population has smoked cannabis.
With all of this support, one would think that politicians would be flip flopping on their cannabis stances pandering to the masses. However, this is not the case. Only some of them have been changing their stance on cannabis, the rest of them continue to follow suit within their automated curated existence.
Why haven’t politicians flocked to cannabis yet?
There might be a couple of reason, however the biggest one is probably related to their funding. Politicians accept “donations” in order to win political campaigns. Once they are in power, these donations act as a means for companies to collect on their donations which often come in the form of political favors, new laws and regulations and so forth.
Many of the industries that pay politicians money have a conflict when it comes to cannabis. From prison unions, police unions, rehabilitation, and so forth – these groups have historically stood against cannabis. Considering that many of the sitting politicians receive monetary compensation from these groups – their reluctance to accept something that the vast majority of the American population is in favor of – is much more telling.
If by any chance the politician is not in favor of cannabis due to their own personal beliefs – then it’s simply a case of having elected someone who doesn’t vibe well with the wants of the people, they are supposed to represent. In that case, the only logical course of actions would be to vote them out in the next election cycle.
Some politicians are pushing for legalization
Fortunately, there’s a small group of politicians that are in favor of legalization and have been actively working on doing the political paperwork to get the job done. However, up until now there have been delay after delay which have left many advocates very disappointed.
Nonetheless, we are seeing a shift occur. Perhaps, politicians are simply slower to accept the change that is happening on a national and international scale. On a local level – there has been plenty of changes with 18 states having full on recreational cannabis on the books, and 36 states with some form of medical cannabis.
The big final push is to get the federal restrictions lifted which should be debated and voted upon before the year’s end. We’ll see if that’s true, since politicians love to stall.
No more reasons to keep it illegal
For those of you who have been following the cannabis policy shifts like I have, we have obliterated virtually every argument against legalization. We have shown that it’s far more effective to regulate cannabis than it is to prohibit it because in every place that has legalized has seen a reduction in teen use. There is no evidence to suggest that there are more drugged driving and the revenue generated by cannabis far exceeds any potential costs of the drug.
The only reason why cannabis has not been legalized – in my opinion – is due to the conflict of interest by some of the private lobbies that still haven’t figured out a way to obtain benefit from legalization. Politicians stall in order to give their donors a head’s up before the policy changes occur.
With all reasoning out of the window, it’s time that we let politicians know that if they do not play ball then they will be voted out of office. In fact, I would argue that the fact that politicians prefer to cater to their sponsors above the people they represent invites us all to rethink how the government should be run. For example, a simple implementation of “term limits” and “ant-nepotism” rules should do quite well in removing monetary bias from public action.
Of course, politicians would hardly vote on terminating their own opportunities – but this simply alludes to a greater problem – the government have long “NOT” represented the people and much rather represent the corporate interest of a few industries. Because of this form of crony capitalism – the resistance of cannabis legalization from the political elite invites us to re-organize our government, societal values and reclaim that which is a fundamental human right – the right to choose!
CANNABIS POLLS, READ MORE..
