Marijuana legalization is often promoted as being a “liberal” issue. After a recent rant against marijuana legalization by conservative talk show host Bill O’reilly, his staff decided to add a marijuana legalization question to the daily poll on his website.
The poll asks the question: “There is momentum behind the move to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Where do you stand?”. The options to answer are:
- It should be legal, like alcohol
- Dangerous idea with many unintended consequences
To many peoples surprise, a whopping 89% of the 70,311 respondents supported legalization. Although the poll does state, “These polls are not scientific.” The response mimics results of more scientific polls from Gallup, CNN and others.
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The surprise with O’reilly’s poll was that his audience is conservative… and they supposedly do not support legalization. Even Gallup’s Poll, that showed 58% of Americans supported marijuana legalization, showed that only 35% of Republicans supported marijuana legalization. I never understood this rationale. A “conservative”, in my opinion, should believe in limiting governments interference in our personal lives, therfore Marijuana Prohibition is the exact opposite of the conservative ideology.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. There was a time in this country when it was believed that the pursuit of Happiness, even chemically, was considered a right the government could not take away.
