Study: College Educated People are More Likely to Support Marijuana Legalization

Supporters of marijuana policy reform have long been viciously mischaracterized and stereotyped by our opposition. We are called druggies and losers. Our views are dismissed as unserious and irresponsible, fueled perhaps by excessive consumption of the drugs we want legalized. But according to Gallup Poll data [3], we are more likely to be college educated:

Americans with some college education -- from those who have attended at least one college course to those who have postgraduate degrees -- are somewhat more likely than those without a college degree to say marijuana should be legal in the country. Thirty-seven percent of adults with a college education support legalization, compared with 31% of those with no college education.

This makes perfect sense if one understands that opposition to the war on marijuana users emerges from a thousand perspectives: economics, public health, human rights, civil liberties, and on and on. Of course, one needn't attend college to recognize the absurdity of this massive war against otherwise law-abiding Americans, but it is important to dispel the notion that marijuana reformers are foolish or naïve. We are not. And we have degrees to prove it.

By contrast, there are many ways in which a lack of education may contribute to a belief that it is wise to criminalize vast portions of the population and attempt to uproot America's #1 cash crop [4]. But let's not forget that the architects [5] of the war on marijuana users are, themselves, very cunning and deliberate in their actions. They've been effective in stigmatizing their opposition as hacks and weirdos, while fostering a false belief among politicians that reform is political suicide.

The future of marijuana policy reform lies in breaking free from the stereotypes imposed on us by our oppressors and revealing our movement as the compassionate, intellectual brain trust that it has blossomed into. This may be inevitable, but in the meantime, let's all try to use proper spelling and punctuation in our blog comments (like the smart, serious people this Gallup Poll reveals us to be).