Gov. Cuomo Calls for Reform: Marijuana Arrests That 'Stigmatize and Criminalize...Must End Now'

[stevenmitchell]

25. marijuana legalization is probably not a RW vs LW issue - as such

"Marijuana legalization is not a RW vs LW issue", as such, but it has always been an "age" issue. I am 55 and people older than me since I was in high school have always castigated me the strongest. At the time of my high school years and even later, most people my age were either indifferent or 420-friendly (if not actual consumers). Now polls indicate a 50-50 split in opinions on its legalization, but that is largely because the elderly who were brought up in and shaped by the "Reefer Madness" era and all of the anti-consumption publicity of the 1930s, 1940s & 1950s have started to die off, to put it harshly. And younger people coming up, who have not been submerged in the propaganda associated with it, are much more liberal about its acceptability. As an indication of this trend changing, when I was in high school in the 1970s and they did public polls, those in favor only constituted 20-25 % of the population. In some polls, it was even less, probably dependent upon the participant ages represented in the polls. So I think it has always been much more an issue of demographics than of political-orientation.