Conclusions

It has been a great semester researching the public's opinion on marijuana and how it has changed. I never truly knew how close we may be as a country to legalizing the drug. I have learned that marijuana has only recently come to the forefront of issues in the United States. 

Forty years ago marijuana was not a topic that was often spoke about in public forums, and the suggestion of possible legalization would have been absurd. In modern times, the drug is becoming increasingly popular and accepted throughout society. Proposition 19, which called for the legalization of marijuana in California on a personal basis, was at the front of issues being voted on in the November midterm elections. Even in defeat, Prop. 19 proved how the opinions of people are beginning to favor the potential legalization, and it may now just be a matter of time before marijuana is made legal in our country. The time I have spent researching opinions and polls throughout the semester has taught me that Americans are changing. Within the last 40 years or so, I found that Americans seem to be more accepting and willing be test new ideas. Before this semester, I had never been too interested on how others felt on controversial issues, but now I understand how many of my views often collaborate with those of others. Public opinion is always changing, and marijuana was an excellent topic to prove this.

All Aboard...

It seems that recently more-and-more major media outlets are beginning to speak out for the legalization of cannabis. Just this week MSNBC published an article that details why America's "experiment" on making cannabis illegal has failed and why it has to stop.  In California, many of the so-called medical cannabis dispensaries and their preferred cultivators forged an odd, and self-interested alliance with the US Drug Enforcement Administration, drug czar’s office, California Chiefs of Police Association, California Beverage Association, Scientologists, drug rehabilitation profiteers and pro-big government, prohibitionist liberals like Senator Diane Feinstein in opposing Proposition 19 (which sought to allow California cities and counties the ability to legalize, regulate and tax cannabis sales to adults for non-medical purposes).



California will not be the last state to attempt the "radical" idea of legalizing the drug while placing strict tax on it. This is something that I see happening very soon in the future all throughout the United States. It will only be a matter of time before the federal government comes to its senses on how to raise money in order to help out current financial crises.

Soon to be former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently made news by saying that, "No one cares if you smoke a joint or not."

This is interesting considering the Hollywood actor turned governor of California signed a law five weeks ago that made possession of up to an ounce of marijuana the equivalent of a traffic ticket. It carries a penalty of no more than a 100 dollar fine and no arrest or criminal record. He defended the law in a TV interview, telling host Jay Leno on NBC television's Tonight Show it was a good idea.

Last week on election day, voters rejected a further initiative that would have allowed adults aged 21 and older to possess and grow small amounts of marijuana. Schwarzenegger told Leno that California's Prop. 19 law had, "gone too far," thus it was not approval by voters.

Exit Poll

On Tuesday our POL 312 class conducted our Exit Poll. It was a pretty exciting time considering we had spent a good amount of the semester preparing questions for the poll and helping eachother with ideas on question order, wording and other topics. Here is my recap of how the day went and some of our results. . .

As a class, we seemed to spent the majority of our time conducting the poll near the Milner Library and inside of the Bone Student Center. Considering the Bone was the polling place, it made sense that the majority of the people willing to take a poll about the elections would be in this central area. I personally was able to grab about 4-5 people in this area (all students) before moving to south campus and the College of Business. In the COB, I found that less people were informed that November 2nd was indeed election day. Even with little knowledge, I found another 5-6 people who were willing to take the poll and support our class results.

As a class, we ended up having 212 people take our poll. This was a fair number and we found the following interesting about our results.

-The majority of the people who took our poll were white in ethnicity and christian in religous faith

-The majority of those answers poll questions voted "democratic" and listed themselves as "liberal"

-The economy/jobs were listed as the primary concern on both a national and state level

-I found it interesting that some people (nearly 50%) said they still had trust with the governor position in Illinois

-Those who voted for Obama in the '08 election primarily voted Democrat once again. This differs from national research.

Overall, the exit poll was a success. The class worked cohesively to get a good number of results and form conclusions based on these results. Personally, this was the first major poll I have conducted. I found the process to be enjoyable and would be interested in conducting more exit polls in upcoming political elections.

Prop 19 is DEAD

Even though voters soundly rejected Proposition 19, cities around California managed to win approval for plans to tax marijuana. The measures were mostly contingent on Proposition 19 passing, so it's doubtful they will have much effect unless pot legalization backers make another stab at a ballot measure sometime in the future.

Many Latin American leaders are breathing a sigh of relief. They were worried that if Proposition 19 in California passed, making recreational marijuana use legal, the drug wars in their respective countries would grow.

Personally, I would have been interested in seeing what would come of Proposition 19 if it had passed. Marijuana is an issue that does not seem to be going away. I would expect the legalization of marijuana to continue to be on upcoming election ballots.

Who Smoked Pot?

I found an article on Gallup from 2002 that caught my eye. It goes into the issue of who has actually smoked marijuana and some statistics on the fact. Statistics show that a third of Americans (34%) said they had tried marijuana at some point. Men were more likely than women to have tried it, 43% to 27%. One might expect to find generational differences, but the proportion of 18- to -29-year-olds and the proportion of 30- to -49-year-olds who say they have tried it are about the same -- 46% and 45%, respectively. However, the figure plummets to 14% among those aged 50 and older.

Some see Marijuana use as a "city problem" that has not made it's way to suburban America. In fact, there's the numbers show little difference in drug experimentation by population center. 38% of urban dwellers have tried marijuana, as have 31% of suburbanites, and 34% of people who live in rural areas.

As Republicans are much less likely than Democrats to think marijuana use should be legal (21% versus 36%), it stands to reason that Republicans would be less likely to have tried marijuana. From the poll, about the SAME amount of Republicans have tried Marijuana as Democrats. (33% to 31%). 


It's always fascinating to see different ideologies in numbers. I personally would expect Republicans, being conservative in nature and against drug use, to have much lower percentages when polled on drug use. These numbers show how drug use cannot be characterized by party, race, religion or sex. Marijuana use is prevalent all over America. These numbers are from 2002, so I would have to imagine they have been on the rise ever since.

Drugs Across the Border

In a Gallup opinion briefing from February, 2009, it was found that over 6,000 innocent people were killed in the on-going drug war that is tearing apart Mexico. With Mexico being our neighbor to the south, it leads one to question where these drugs are heading? Could they be going to the United States, a country where drug use is highly patrolled? In Mexico,violence has soared since President Calderon declared war on drug traffickers in late 2006 and deployed tens of thousands of troops to combat the cartels; much of the surge is viewed as backlash against the crackdown. Bloodshed across the U.S. border has prompted some experts in recent months to issue dire warnings about Mexico's future stability and the potential security risks to the United States. A 2008 poll showed how large group of gangs have grown and whether common citizens are becoming fearful for their own innocent lives. Nearly 60% of those polled said that they have gang members living in close proximity to them and over 40% say that direct drug trafficking happens in their neighborhoods. These scenarios are playing out all over Mexico. United States President Obama applauded Calderon for his "extraordinary courage and leadership" in dealing with drug trafficking and the related violence in Mexico. According to Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs, the president has expressed his support during the meeting for "the valuable work being done under the Merida Initiative," the $1.4 billion U.S. counter-drug and anti-crime assistance package for Mexico and Central America. The drug war in Mexico seems to be never ending and continues to escalate daily. Travelers are being fearful of visiting the country it has become such a large issue. Americans need to question why drugs, in particular marijuana, has become such a sought after drug in Mexico, and whether the purchase by citizens of the United States is what is inciting this drug war to the south. With marijuana continuing to stay illegal and patrolled in the US, one can only imagine this gruesome war to the south continuing to escalate.