A Clear Majority Backs Legalizing Marijuana

One year ago, support for legalizing marijuana reached a milestone. According to Gallup, which has been tracking public support for legalization since 1969 (when only 12 percent favored it), 50 percent of Americans supported legalizing marijuana in 2012. 

One year later, support has jumped to 58 percent.

There are few other issues, save gay marriage, where public opinion has changed so dramatically. Indeed Ethan Nadelmann, the Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, sees a strong analogy between the two issues, telling Big Think that both “involve issues of fundamental freedom basically about the right to be left alone for what you do in the privacy of your own home.”

In a recent talk at The Nantucket Project, a festival of ideas on Nantucket, MA, Nadelmann says that laws prohibiting marijuana use as well as gay relationships, have always been grounded in fear, not fact-based analysis. 

Watch the video here:

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