Five Decades Into The War On Drugs, Decriminalizing Marijuana Has High Bipartisan Support

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Last week, President Biden pardoned federal offenses for marijuana possession, part of a promise he had made on the campaign trail to decriminalize weed. The order to vacate the sentences of at least 6,500 American citizens and lawful permanent residents elicited praise from some cannabis advocates, while others have said the move is only a first step at best. Some activists, especially those who highlight how enforcement of the current law disproportionately targets Black communities, said the pardon doesn’t go far enough.

But, in general, Americans agree that the country’s legislation on marijuana does need an update. According to polling conducted by Morning Consult/Politico just days before the Oct. 6 pardon, 6 in 10 American voters said weed should be legal in the U.S. That number rises to about 7 in 10 among voters under 45 (70 percent), Democrats (71 percent) and Black voters (72 percent). Even among the groups least likely to support legalizing marijuana — Republicans (47 percent) and voters 65 or over (45 percent) — close to half of respondents agreed. There’s no real divide across regions, either.

Current laws, however, do not reflect this sweeping bipartisan, universal support. The legalization of marijuana puts a spotlight on the divide between Americans and politicians, namely Republican members of Congress. Public opinion has changed drastically on this issue in the past two decades but getting legislation to catch up with an updated national sentiment has not been easy, especially when the topic carries a century of social baggage.

Support for relaxed weed laws hasn’t always been so widespread. When Gallup surveyed Americans on the topic in March 1972, eight months after then-President Richard Nixon declared the nation’s infamous war on drugs, only 15 percent agreed that the use of marijuana should be legal. Meanwhile, in a separate Gallup survey conducted several days prior to that, just 11 percent said that they had tried marijuana.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/five-decades-into-the-war-on-drugs-decriminalizing-marijuana-has-high-bipartisan-support/

[sanatanadharma]

1. More like 85 years of anti-cannabis war

[Kid Berwyn]

2. Nixon hated happy hippies and non-white humans.

“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

“Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

— John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon

Source: https://www.vera.org/reimagining-prison-webumentary/the-past-is-never-dead/drug-war-confessional

[Calculating]

3. Legalize already

End this century long injustice. There are basically no non hypocritical reasons to keep it illegal at this point.

[Shermann]

5. Less than 50% of Republicans approve...so you lose that whole block nt