A majority of Americans now favor of marijuana legalization for the first time in more than four decades of polling on the issue, according to Pew Research Center.
The latest survey from Pew released on Thursday showed that 52 percent of Americans believe marijuana should be made legal compared with 45 percent who said it should not. It’s the latest sign of the rapidly changing attitudes on the issue, not unlike the public shift on same-sex marriage.
Consider Pew’s previous findings on the issue. In 2011, 50 percent of Americans said pot should remain illegal. A majority of 52 percent said it should stay illegal in 2010. The latest findings also amount to huge change since the late 1960s. In 1969, a Gallup survey showed that 84 percent of Americans thought marijuana was rightly illegal.
One of the driving forces behind the shift is the evolution among Baby Boomers. Although a plurality of Boomers supported legalization in the late 1970s, they completely flipped in the subsequent decade. A mere 17 percent of Boomers supported legalization in 1990. Today, half of Boomers support making marijuana legal. Not surprisingly, a huge majority of 18-32 year olds — 65 percent — support legalization.
The attitudinal shift can also be attributed to a change in the perception of marijuana’s purported severity or its status as a so-called “gateway drug.” The latest poll from Pew showed that only 38 percent believe that “for most people the use of marijuana leads to the use of hard drugs.” Only 32 percent said smoking marijuana is morally wrong.
