Federal law in the United States makes it unlawful to use or possess marijuana, but the majority of states have recently legalized it for either recreational or medical use. The shift in the law has coincided with a sharp rise in public support for cannabis legalization.
Based on surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center and other sources, we’ve highlighted seven key facts below concerning Americans’ perceptions of and attitudes toward cannabis.
About 90% of Americans believe cannabis should be legal for either recreational or medical use.
A survey by the Pew Research Center in October 2022 found that an overwhelming majority of Americans (88%) believe that marijuana should be legal for either medicinal or recreational use. Of this population, 30% believe that it should only be legal for medical purposes, while 59% advocate for its recreational use; 10% believe that the drug should never be authorized in any form.
Race, ethnicity, political party, and age all significantly affect public support for legalizing marijuana.
The October 2022 survey found that those 75 and older are significantly less likely to support the legalization of marijuana for adult use than younger adults. Only 3 out of 10 people above the age of 75 believe marijuana should be legal for adult use, compared to 53% of those between the ages of 65 and 74. In contrast, 72% of people under the age of 30 favor legalizing marijuana for recreational and medical use.
GOP and Republican leaners are less likely than Democrats and Independents with a Democratic lean to support marijuana legalization (45% vs. 75%).
Regarding race and ethnicity, 48% and 49% of Asian Americans and Hispanics, respectively, support legalizing marijuana, compared to 68% of Black and 60% of white adults who support it.
Those in for and against cannabis legalization have given various justifications for their positions.
According to a 2019 Gallup poll, the perception of marijuana’s medical benefits (86%) and the belief that legalizing the substance would allow law enforcement to focus on other types of crime (70%) were the two most frequently cited reasons by supporters of cannabis legalization.
An estimated 79% of Americans who opposed legalizing marijuana cited the rise of road accidents and fatalities as a major justification for their opposition.
Support for cannabis legalization has significantly grown over the past 20 years.
According to Gallup surveys from 2000 and 2019, there has been a significant increase in support for legalizing marijuana. Two-thirds of Americans in the 2019 study said they supported marijuana legalization, which is more than double the percentage who said the same in the 2000 survey.
Less than one-half of American adults (46%) claim to have used marijuana at some point.
This is according to a 2021 Survey on Health and Drug Use. The same survey found that while many Americans claim to have used cannabis in the past, much fewer actually do so now. At the time of the survey, 13% had used it recently, while 19% had done so the previous year.
The majority of Americans favor reducing the penalty for those who have marijuana-related convictions.
According to a survey by the 2021 Center conducted in October, 67% of adults supported releasing prisoners who were being imprisoned for marijuana-related charges. Additionally, roughly 6 out of 10 Americans (61%) are in favor of expunging or deleting marijuana-related charges from people’s criminal histories.
Black Americans, Democrats, and younger persons are more likely than older adults to approve these measures. For instance, almost 74% of Black adults support releasing prisoners who are only being detained for marijuana-related charges, and a similar percentage supports expunging or erasing marijuana-related convictions from criminal records.
As of April 2023, 21 states and Washington, D.C., allow adults to use recreational cannabis in modest amounts.
In addition to the 21 states and Washington, D.C., the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands have all enacted recreational cannabis legalization laws.
Approximately 48% of Americans currently reside in a state or territory where recreational marijuana is legal, according to a Center study of U.S. Census Bureau population projections for 2022.
Separately, some kind of medicinal marijuana program has been approved by more than 30 states, as well as Washington, D.C. The percentage of Americans (74%) who reside in areas with medicinal marijuana programs is about three-fourths of the total.
Additionally, many states have passed laws that decrease the severity of criminal penalties for some marijuana-related crimes or permit the expungement of prior convictions.
As more companies such as IGC Pharma Inc. (NYSE American: IGC) venture into developing cannabis-based medicines that end up being approved by the FDA, attitudes to this plant could shift even more away from prohibition.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to IGC Pharma Inc. (NYSE American: IGC) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://cnw.fm/IGC
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