Support For Marijuana Legalization Is At A Record High

According to a recent poll from Gallup, support for legalizing marijuana is at a record high. The poll, released on Wednesday, found that 64% of Americans say that marijuana should be legal, "the highest level of public support Gallup has found for the proposal in nearly a half-century of measurement."

The survey showed that for the first time, a majority of Republicans (51%) are in favor of legalizing marijuana, up nine percentage points from last year. Since Gallup began conducting the poll in 1969, the percentage of Americans who approve of legal marijuana has gradually increased.

Marijuana legalization has been an issue on several state ballots in recent years, though it remains illegal at the federal level. Last year, eight states, including California, Florida, and Massachusetts, voted to make weed legal.

Gallup noted that the upwards trajectory in the number of people who approved of legalizing weed was similar to the trajectory of those who began to approve of same-sex marriage.

"Over the past several years, Gallup has found that Americans have become more liberal on a variety of social issues," the researchers noted.

Earlier this year, we reported that Sen. Cory Booker introduced the Marijuana Justice Act, a bill that would remove cannabis from the U.S. list of controlled substances. The bill would make marijuana legal at the federal level, but still allow states to decide on their own policies.

"Our country’s drug laws are badly broken and need to be fixed," Booker said in a statement provided to Refinery29 in August. "They don’t make our communities any safer — instead they divert critical resources from fighting violent crimes, tear families apart, unfairly impact low-income communities and communities of color, and waste billions in taxpayer dollars each year."