When same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide, political and social scientists noted the societal shift on the issue had been remarkable — even unparalleled. Before the Supreme Court enshrined the right into law in 2015, Americans had moved sharply in favor of it, and they have continued to do so since then.
“You can’t find another issue where attitudes have shifted so rapidly,” a political scientist told The Washington Post.
It turns out you kind of can — because marijuana is on virtually the same trajectory.
Monmouth University released a new poll Monday finding that nearly 7 in 10 Americans — 68 percent — support legalizing small amounts for personal use, compared with just 26 percent who oppose it.
The poll comes as President Biden in recent weeks moved to pardon anyone convicted of a federal crime for simply possessing the drug, and urged governors to do the same at the state level. (The poll shows 69 percent support those pardons.) He also said his administration would review marijuana’s classification as a Schedule I drug, a category that includes heroin.
Compared with 25 years ago, the poll numbers regarding marijuana legalization have flipped. In 1997, an ABC News poll showed just 22 percent supported legalizing possession of small amounts for personal use, and three-quarters opposed it.
That position had held since the 1980s. But since then, the trajectory has been steadily and rather sharply tilting toward legalization, according to a review of polling from Monmouth, ABC, CBS News and The Washington Post.
And if you overlay support for same-sex marriage on top of legalizing small amounts of marijuana, you’ll see they are on very similar tracks. Only about one-quarter supported these policies in the late 1990s; now about 7 in 10 support them.
(The below chart uses Gallup data for same-sex marriage.)
Thus far, the sharp shift in favor of legalizing marijuana hasn’t occasioned a blanket national policy. But many states have moved to legalize medical marijuana, and a smaller but growing number have legalized possession for personal and recreational use.
Measures to legalize recreational marijuana are on the ballot in five states in next month’s election, including four red ones. If they pass, it will mean nearly half of all states will have legalized it.
Most of those states have legalized it via ballot initiative rather than through their legislators — a reflection of how touchy this issue remains for elected officials. At the same time, the response on the right to Biden’s move has been muted — even as Republicans pursue a tough-on-crime message in the 2022 elections. It mirrors same-sex marriage in that way: Conservatives perhaps recognize their side is increasingly on the losing side of an issue and decide to stop talking about it.
(Democrats have recently pushed for Congress to codify same-sex marriage, citing the Supreme Court’s overturning the right to an abortion and warning same-sex marriage could be next. While we don’t know whether Republicans will provide enough votes in the Senate, 47 House Republicans did vote for it, and the ones who oppose it have emphasized that they feel the bill is unnecessary — that the Supreme Court won’t actually overturn Obergefell — rather than that they oppose same-sex marriage.)
The Monmouth poll suggests the march toward legalized marijuana is likely to continue. For instance, far fewer people said marijuana was more dangerous than alcohol (7 percent to 54 percent) and tobacco (13 percent to 45 percent). It shows just 3 in 10 view marijuana as at least a “moderately serious” problem — down from half in a 2014 CNN poll. And support for legalization is nearly at consensus levels among younger people, with 87 percent of those under 35 years old supporting it.
It might take some time before everyone is truly on board, given that Republicans and senior citizens are split about evenly on the issue. But right now — barring some new revelation showing negative effects from the legalization we’ve seen thus far — it seems to be only a matter of time.
