More Americans think that state marijuana reforms have been a success than those who think cannabis legalization has been a failure, according to a new poll.
YouGov, a data analytics and market research company, asked close to 30,000 US adults on April 20 – the unofficial cannabis holiday – whether adult-use marijuana legalization was a success or a failure in those states which had passed such legislation. Fifty five percent of respondents said it had been completely successful (19 percent) or more of a success than a failure (36 percent).
Only 19 percent of respondents said the measure had been a total failure (6 percent) or more of a failure than a success (13 percent). The remaining 26 percent of respondents said they did not know whether marijuana legalization had been a success or a failure.
Of particular note in YouGov’s survey results is the lack of regional variations in responses. Though only eleven states in the country permit adult-use marijuana sales, the share of responses across the Northeast, Midwest, South and the West were broadly the same. Tellingly, no region came close to a a majority opinion that marijuana legalization had been more of a failure than a success.
Divides, however, are clear when political affiliation is taken into account. More than two-thirds of Democrats believe that marijuana legalization has been a complete success (24 percent) or more of a success than a failure (43 percent). For Independents, this drops to 54 percent, while only 41 percent of Republicans believe cannabis legalization has been a success.
There are also differences in opinion across age demographics, though to less of a degree than with party loyalty. Younger people were more likely to respond that marijuana legalization had been a “success only,” while older people were more likely to respond that legalizing marijuana had been a failure. Among different age brackets up to the age of 44, between 23 to 28 percent of respondents think marijuana legalization had been completely successful. This drops to 17 percent for those between 45 and 54 years of age, and to 13 percent for those older than 55. Seventeen percent of those aged 55 and older think marijuana legalization has been more a failure than a success.
YouGov’s findings are yet more evidence of the nationwide momentum behind marijuana legalization. Numerous polls indicate a dramatic increase over the past decade in approval for the measure among Americans, with the policy change now enjoying a steady majority.