Marijuana legalizers are winning the battle for hearts and minds.
That’s one takeaway from a new Pew Research Center survey on public attitudes toward marijuana legalization. The survey found that 53 percent of Americans say the use of marijuana should be legal, consistent with what other major studies have shown.
But in an interesting follow-up, Pew researchers asked whether people had always held these attitudes toward legalization, or whether there was a time they had felt differently. The results are telling: roughly 40 percent of legalization supporters said they used to feel differently. By contrast, only 16 percent of opponents said the same.
Americans overwhelmingly say that the thought of people using weed in the privacy of their own homes does not bother them: 82 percent say it wouldn’t be a problem.
And while some Colorado property owners are suing over proposed pot dispensaries in their neighborhoods, a surprising 57 percent of all Americans say they’d have no problem if a marijuana business opened up next door.
People draw the line at smoking in public, though: 62 percent say this would bother them. Given that 56 percent of Americans support a total ban on cigarette smoking in public, this isn’t a huge surprise.
