A couple weeks ago Lee put up a post attempting to extrapolate data on how Washington State might feel about reforming our marijuana laws from a national survey. As it turns out, I was at a meet and greet with the 36th legislative district legislators, and during Q&A someone asked Mary Lou Dickerson about her proposed law to legalize Marijuana, and after she said her piece, she asked a representative of the ACLU of Washington to say a few words, and she mentioned that they had conducted a poll a while ago.
The poll was taken in 2006 among 1200 registered voters in WA with a sampling error of +/- 2.8%. The question was asked at the beginning and end of the poll.
Some people think we should make marijuana legal for adults while others say we should not. In your view, should we a) continue to send adults to jail for marijuana possession, b) make marijuana possession a finable non-criminal offense, or c) make marijuana possession LEGAL for adults?
In the beginning the results were:
Continue to send adults to jail for marijuana possession………………………………….. 29%
Make marijuana possession a finable non-criminal offense ……………………………… 30%
Make marijuana possession LEGAL for adults ………………………………………………. 37%
Don’t know……………….4%
And at the end:
Continue to send adults to jail for marijuana possession………………………………….. 22%
Make marijuana possession a finable non-criminal offense ……………………………… 34%
Make marijuana possession LEGAL for adults ………………………………………………. 40%
Don’t know………………………….4%
More recently they asked just people in Puget Sound counties 2008. 500 registered voters +/- 4.5% and they only asked the question once.
Continue to send adults to jail for marijuana possession………………………………….. 26%
Make marijuana possession a finable non-criminal offense ……………………………… 33%
Make marijuana possession LEGAL for adults ………………………………………………. 32%
Don’t know……………………. 10%
So, a couple caveats: obviously the poll is for an organization that’s pushing specific policies. While I don’t think the Washington ACLU is in the business of deluding themselves, I wouldn’t have heard of it, and I don’t know if they’d have let me see it if there had been a lot of support for locking people up. Also, obviously, one statewide poll and one poll of a region in the state are hardly conclusive of how an initiative campaign or legislative session might play out.
…Argh. Insert not very funny posting while high joke here (although in reality worse, just sloppy writing, and poor editing and trying to rush it out). The polls got reversed in the original post, and this has been updated significantly for clarity and my being an idiot.
IMO, there’s no way that marijuana gets legalized until big business can somehow get involved (profit) without getting cut out by home-growers.
(think of this: some big-pharma creates medical marijauna that doesn’t have the altered state. They legalize THAT and the illegal drug trade continues to exist. a true sign that congress is paid for..)
Our representatives make no decisions that benefit citizens without first consulting the oligarchs… The oligarchs (campaign contributors) have the last word.
The concern for the government is how to tax the home-grower.
So, support for legalization has gone down, as indicated by the corrected results you post?
still waiting for the expose on rob mckenna’s role in the maurice clemons bail fiasco. keep ur memories sharp.
@2 No more difficult than taxing moonshiners. In fact, easier because marijuana plants take longer to grow and are less mobile than a backyard still.
The concern over home-growers is laughable when you consider that most people are just too lazy to brew their own beer or make their own wine, and certainly are too lazy to distill their own spirits. They can, if they want to, but why bother, when the corner liquor store is only a block or two away?
The same principle will apply for re-legalized cannabis. Most will buy their prepackaged whatevers and pay a tax on it. It’s only if the tax becomes too high you’ll see a resurgence of home-grows.
This legalization schema doesn’t have to be some kind of Rube Goldberg contraption, overly complicated to the point of idiocy. Just do it the way it’s done with booze.
So less than 1/3 of the public, approaching 25%…think our CURRENT laws are correct and that people should be able to be jailed for this ‘crime’. Funny, how can we KEEP having laws that are opposed by 2/3 of the public?
But politicians (incorrectly) think they can only get elected by pretending to be “tough on crime” so this issue gets swept up in that, and then add on to that the fact that very few people vote “on” this issue…so the status quo continues.
RR is right, this past LD session a law passed that allowed limited home production of booze, though this would be closer to beer sales and production in Washington.
I have been making my own beer for years. Limited Home grow would be a hobby like Home Brew.
Americans want to go to 7-11 right now and buy something produced, they can nit wait fir brewing, or growing.
The grower, like the brewer (Redhook) wins on the combination of cost/quality/availability.