Everyone wants marijuana legalization except politicians, a new voter poll appears to say

I wonder if politicians ever check the polls because if they did, they would find that simply saying “I support cannabis legalization” would immediately garner them a ton of support for their political campaigns. For a long time, cannabis users have been stigmatized as “second-class citizens”, “lazy wimps” who make no contribution to society. Unfortunately, this would include around half of the population as most surveys show that around 1 in 2 people have tried cannabis in the past. That’s not to say they’re all stoners, it simply means that more than half of the US population prefers some form of legalization.

In fact, according to some polls, we’re talking about 70% of the population participating in some kind of general cannabis reform. What makes it even more compelling is that support for cannabis reform isn’t a partisan thing either.

According to Law and Crime – a recent poll sheds light on the impartial issue of legalizing cannabis;

The poll unearthed some interesting statistics, 54 percent of Republicans along with 68 percent of Democrats and 62 percent with a third or “other” political view voted in favor of the national marijuana legalization policy.

Additionally, nearly half of respondents said that “state regulation” should be implemented, while only 32 supported the “state” approach. The survey had a +/- 3% margin of error and used a sample group of 1000 people representing the US population.

A recent Gallup poll confirmed that sentiment.

70 percent of adult Americans consider smoking cannabis safe and a morally acceptable activity, while 50 percent of the adult population have smoked cannabis.

With all this support, you’d think politicians would turn their stance on cannabis on its head to support the masses. However, this is not the case. Only a few of them have changed their stance on cannabis, the rest are following suit in their automated, curated existence.

Why haven’t politicians flown to cannabis yet?

There could be a few reasons, but the biggest probably has to do with their funding. Politicians accept “donations” to win political campaigns. Once in power, these donations serve as a vehicle for corporations to collect their donations, which often come in the form of political favors, new laws and regulations, and so on.

Many of the industries that pay politicians money have a conflict when it comes to cannabis. From prison unions, police unions, rehabilitation and so on – these groups have historically opposed cannabis. When one considers that many of the incumbent politicians receive financial compensation from these groups — their reluctance to accept something that the vast majority of the American public supports — is far more telling.

If the politician happens to be not pro-cannabis because of personal beliefs, then he simply chose someone who is not a good fit with the wishes of the people he is supposed to represent. In that case, the only logical course of action would be to vote them out in the next election cycle.

Some politicians are pushing for legalization

Luckily, there is a small group of pro-legalization politicians who have been actively working on completing the political paperwork to get the job done. So far, however, there has been one delay after another, which has greatly disappointed many proponents.

Nonetheless, we are seeing a shift. Perhaps politicians are simply slower to embrace the changes that are taking place nationally and internationally. On a local level, there has been a lot of change, with 18 states having full recreational cannabis on the books and 36 states having some form of medicinal cannabis.

The big final push is to lift federal restrictions, which should be debated and voted on before the end of the year. We’ll see if that’s true, because politicians love to falter.

No more reasons to keep it illegal

For those of you who, like me, have been following the changes in cannabis policy, we’ve pretty much eliminated any argument against legalization. We have shown that regulating cannabis is much more effective than banning it because wherever it has been legalized there has been a decline in teen use. There is no evidence that there is more drug driving and that the revenues generated from cannabis far outweigh any potential costs of the drug.

The only reason cannabis hasn’t been legalized, in my opinion, is the conflict of interest of some private lobbies who still haven’t found a way to cash in on legalization. Politicians are reluctant to give their donors a warning before the policy changes come.

With all the arguments out the window, it’s time we let politicians know that if they don’t play along, they’ll be voted out. In fact, I would argue that the fact that politicians prefer to look after their sponsors rather than the people they represent invites us all to reconsider how government should be run. For example, a simple implementation of “restriction time” and “ant-nepotism” rules should do quite well to remove monetary bias from public policies.

Of course, politicians would hardly vote to end their own opportunities – but that simply alludes to a larger problem – the government has long “NOT” represented the people, but rather represents the corporate interests of a few industries. Because of this form of crony capitalism – the opposition of the political elite to cannabis legalization invites us to reorganize our government and our societal values ​​and reclaim what is a basic human right – the right to vote!

CANNABIS SURVEYS, READ MORE..

CANNABIS SURVEY GOES STRONG, WHEN IS LEGALIZATION?