Only Fourteen Years To Go
Statistics guru Nate Silver posits that public support will be sufficiently strong that marijuana will be legalized by 2022:
Firstly, although support for legalization has grown, it remains the minority position. Secondly, although there has been a long, slow-moving upward trend in favor of legalization since roughly 1992, there is no guarantee that public sentiment will continue to move in that direction: support for legalization had grown to about 30 percent in the mid 1970s before dropping significantly during the Just Say No years of the 1980s.
Still, the position no longer holds the stigma that it once did. About as many Americans now support legalizing marijuana as do de-legalizing abortion. The past three Presidents have admitted, more or less, to marijuana use. Thirteen states have some form of decriminalization on the books, while fourteen permit medical use of the drug, although it is not clear how robust those provisions are as they are superseded by federal law.
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My guess is that we’ll need to see a supermajority of Americans in favor of decriminalizing pot before the federal government would dare to take action on it. If the upward trend since 1990 holds (and recall my earlier caution: it might not), then legalization would achieve 60 percent support at some point in 2022 or 2023. Of course, many states will probably have already legalized marijuana by then and it may even be possible to Buy Shatter online as well as other cannabis products. However, federal laws on the drug may take until the early 2020s to be passed. About then is when things might get interesting. But I’d guess we’ll see other some other once-unthinkable things like legalized gay marriage first.
Seems like a long time to wait for the insanity to end, no ?
