Analysis of 3 million Reddit posts reveals key arguments that helped make marijuana legal

By Nina Zdinjak

What has influenced the recent marijuana legalization movement?

Probably many factors, such as more research on health benefits, positive examples from states and countries that have already enforced marijuana legalization, potential economic benefits, and of course the power of social media.

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New research arises

According to a recent study by a Brown University researcher, certain types of preservation on Reddit may have impacted public support for cannabis legalization, Marijuana Moment reported.

The study, a Ph.D. Candidate Babak Hemmatian, titled “Taking the High Road: A Big Data Investigation of Natural Discourse in the Emerging US Consensus about Marijuana Legalization,” examined more than three million Reddit posts from 2009 to 2019.The US rose 38% in 2008 65% in 2019.

“Marijuana legalization is a very unusual topic, as bipartisan consensus has been reached within a few years while American society has otherwise become more polarized,” Hemmatian told Marijuana Moment. “I wanted to know if the way the public discusses marijuana has facilitated this unusual change, and how this shift in attitudes has in turn affected the way we talk about cannabis.”

Character judgments show the way

Surprisingly, the study found that generalized content, character-based arguments, and a moralistic focus had a greater impact on the marijuana legalization movement than anecdotal content.

“More general frames form the basis for any successful legalization offer. Character judgments took center stage in 2012, while crime and politics took center stage in 2016. The generalized legalization precedents in the two periods shared argumentatively and morally, but had different profiles at the clause level. In the meantime, legal and medical arguments have been marginalized, which means that the new consensus was not shaped by a lot of relevant information, ”the study author emphasized.

Moral principles as a compass

Another interesting discovery showed that contributions on the health effects of marijuana “were only picked up after legalization was complete and only in casual discussions”, while the legal consequences of the reform “were not discussed prominently in most states, even after successful legalization”.

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“Both topics are highly relevant to whether and how the substance should be deregulated, but were ignored in the decision-making process and only taken into account when the social decision had already been made,” said Hemmatian.

RELATED: How Reddit Became the Most Weed-Friendly Social Media Platform on the Internet

The author went on to explain that character judgments may have pushed people who stood on the fence, but not those who strongly opposed legalization. “That’s because they make decision-making much easier: you no longer have to understand the complicated health, economic and social effects of cannabis to make a decision; they just need to think through their personal moral principles. This may have been comforting during a transition period when uncertainty about the status of marijuana would have frightened many people, ”he said.

The study concludes that “early legalization victories depended on character judgments, while the final nails were hammered into the coffin of prohibition with action-oriented strategies around politics and crime.”

RELATED: The FDA will use Reddit to learn more about cannabis-derived products, including CBD and Delta-8

This isn’t the only research on cannabis and Reddit. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced plans in October to use the platform and similar data sources to gain a better understanding of public health issues related to the use of CBD and other cannabis. derived products.

This article originally appeared on Benzinga and was republished with permission.