Polls: Never Been A Better Time To Legalize Pot - SFGate

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Tue Feb-24-09 06:49 PM
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Polls: Never Been A Better Time To Legalize Pot - SFGate

Polls: Never been a better time to legalize pot
Posted By: Joe Garofoli (Email) | February 23 2009 at 04:48 PM

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Go ahead and bust out your stoner jokes about Tom Ammiano for introducing a bill that would legalize marijuana for recreational purposes in California. But pollster supreme Nate Silver -- yeah, the stats supergeek who made all the right calls in the 2008 election -- says the public has never been more dope-friendly than now. We hope that's a better forecast than his lame Oscar predictions.

(For those of you who are baked while you're reading this, two things: First, who gets baked and reads a political blog? And second,if you cue Peter Tosh's "Legalize It" as you check out the rest of Nate's analysis, it will make it sssooooooooooooo much better.)

A couple of recent polls show that the public's attitudes are changing towards bud. Last week, a Rasmussen Poll found that 40 percent of Americans supporting legalizing pot and 46 percent opposed. Support is much higher among folks under 40 and men (48 percent.) A CBS/NY Times poll last month put support at 41 percent and Zogby -- done for the hemp clothing lovers at NORML -- found that 44 wanted legal doobage.

And don't forget Michael Phelps. Rasmussen found that 60 percent of folks still had a positive image of him post-bong photo; but 53 percent agreed with Kellogg's decision to dump him.

Nate, of course, has a chart and an explanation for this:

"That all three polls show support for legalization passing through the 40 percent barrier may be significant. I compiled a database of every past poll I could find on this subject, including a series of Gallup polls and results from the General Social Survey, and could never before find more than 36 percent of the population (Gallup in October, 2005) stating a position in favor of legalization."

Dude, if you turn this chart 90 degrees to the left, it looks just like my buddy's bong

It's a different era when our very own president is an admitted doper ("I inhaled frequently. That was the point"), albeit in his younger daze. Still, Team Obama's attitude has been (dazed and) confused when it comes to marijuana decriminalizing. It seemed that at first he was OK with is, then felt some heat and backpedaled.

On Obama's Change.gov Web site, which was used during the transition period, his staff asked the public to submit new policy ideas. Then the rest of the online community voted on its favorites.The most popular idea, by a wide margin: "Ending marijuana prohibition."

Eventually, the Obama team responded with a succinct: "President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana."

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Link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=14&entry_id=36162

I've made a bet with several friends, that if Obama gets a second term as president, pot would be legal by the end of those years. Lookin kinda good right now, LOL!

:smoke::woohoo::smoke:

:hippie:

:hi: