America has seen the future, and it is high.<\/p>\n
Fifty-eight percent of U.S. adults say recreational marijuana will be legal nationwide in the next 20 years, according to a new Bloomberg Politics poll. That includes 13 percent who say it will take 20 years, 26 percent who say it will take 10 years, 17 percent who say it\u2019s just five years away, and 2 percent who say it will happen in the next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur civilization can\u2019t look away from the fact that (marijuana) is not bad, and the only reason we don\u2019t have it is because of the archaic mentality,\u201d said Dakota Daniels, a 21-year-old waiter from Pueblo, who participated in the poll. He said he thinks people will embrace regulation \u2013 as opposed to bans \u2013 as Colorado did in 2012, because it allows states to set safety standards and reap tax revenue.<\/p>\n
Not everyone is convinced that legal recreational weed is a foregone conclusion. Thirty-two percent said recreational marijuana will never be legal in all 50 states.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s so many people that have seen what drugs and alcohol have done to their families that I don\u2019t think it will ever, ever, ever be legalized in this country,\u201d said Chris Harmon, 42, a sales rep in New Philadelphia, Ohio.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you let that in, there\u2019s a slippery slope to that next exit ramp,\u201d said Harmon, a Republican.<\/p>\n
Four states \u2013 Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska \u2013 have legalized the recreational use of pot. Nevada voters will decide whether to legalize the drug in 2016, and voters in Maine, Massachusetts, Arizona, and California are poised to follow suit. California, the nation\u2019s most populous state, could prove a tipping point.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of eyes are on California,\u201d said Gavin Newsom, the state\u2019s Democratic lieutenant governor and a supporter of legalization. \u201cIt\u2019s very different than almost any other state because of the scale and the magnitude of the change and what it will represent across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daniels said he thinks Americans no longer fear of the drug. \u201cThis whole \u2018reefer-madness\u2019 mentality is being proven wrong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The poll was conducted April 6-8 by Selzer & Co. of West Des Moines, Iowa, among 1,008 adults. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Read the full poll questions and methodology here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bloomberg poll, respondents expect in 20 years, it will be legal nationwide<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742,5735],"tags":[135,1610],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-113116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-news","tag-marijuana","tag-recreational-marijuana"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113116"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=113116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}