Medical marijuana has broad support in NC, Elon Poll finds. Will that lead to action?
A large majority of North Carolinians — including nearly two-thirds of Republicans — would support the legalization of medical marijuana, a new poll has found.
The poll from Elon University, published Thursday morning, also found that most people would approve of even broader changes to fully legalize weed.
The 54% support for full legalization is not as widespread as the 73% support for more limited medical marijuana legalization, but it indicates views have changed since a 2017 poll, when 51% opposed full legalization.
The 73% support for medical marijuana is actually lower than support in that 2017 poll. It is the same finding as a poll from last year, conducted by CBS17.
Thursday’s Elon poll also found that only around one in every four people think it is “morally wrong” to use marijuana, or that marijuana is a “gateway drug.” Similarly, most people don’t think legalizing marijuana would lead to an increase in either crime or traffic accidents, and most said it would help the economy.
In all, the findings indicate that people are largely OK with weed — even though it remains illegal.
“On most issues where you have almost 80% support for legalization, you see it get legalized,” said Jason Husser, director of the Elon University Poll. “Not in North Carolina, though.”
Most U.S. states have already legalized medical marijuana, and around a dozen have gone a step further with full legalization.
But North Carolina doesn’t allow the citizen-led ballot initiatives that many other states have used to approve some form of marijuana legalization, especially in the South. Here, the only way for changes to pass is if they gain support at the Republican-controlled General Assembly.
Greensboro Rep. Pricey Harrison has been one of the Democrats who sponsored various types of marijuana bills in recent years. She said those bills have rarely gotten a committee hearing, let alone been put to a vote. But with public opinion so clear among people from both parties, she said, you never know when that might change.
“It’s just hard to predict what will happen with our legislature,” she said.
A spokesman for Sen. Phil Berger, the top Republican in that chamber, said he didn’t have any comment on the poll’s findings.
No marijuana-related bills have been filed yet this year. But Janis Ramquist, a political consultant for the pro-legalization group NC NORML, said they’re expecting to see some soon. She said “there’s possibility that we have movement on something” due to the growing public support, especially on the right.
“I think that the General Assembly is beginning to become aware of how much the public really wants to have access to medical cannabis,” she said.
Husser noted that support for full legalization has gained lots of ground just since that last poll four years ago. And as neighboring states experiment with marijuana — like Virginia, which voted to fully legalize it last week — and as people keep hearing about it, Husser said support will likely continue growing.
Marijuana polling results
On medical marijuana specifically, Thursday’s poll found:
▪ 73% of North Carolinians support medical marijuana, compared to 18% opposed.
▪ Republicans support it by a margin of 64-27.
▪ There’s even broader support among Democrats (75-17) and voters in neither party (79-13).
▪ Among senior citizens, 62% support it and 28% oppose it. That’s not much different from younger age groups, where support ranges from 69% to 79%.
When it came to the question of fully legalizing marijuana — not just for medical use — a majority of Democrats, independents and people under 65 supported that, too. However, support dropped off among Republicans and especially among senior citizens.
The findings for full legalization showed:
▪ 54% of North Carolinians support it, compared to 34% opposed.
▪ Republicans oppose it, but not by a majority, with 43% in support and 49% opposed.
▪ It has majority support with Democrats (59-29) and voters in neither party (57-27).
▪ Unlike with medical marijuana, there’s a big generational divide. Full legalization has over 60% support from people between 18-24 and from age 25-44. But that drops to 52% support among people from 45-64. And for people 65 and up, a majority (56%) oppose it.
“Older voters are more likely to remember Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and the War on Drugs than people under 44,” Husser said.
As for why he thinks voters over 65 are the only age group to support medical marijuana but not full legalization, he said it could be as simple as they see its potential for issues that affect them, like treating pain associated with arthritis or cancer, “but they don’t want their 19-year-old grandchild doing it.”
Decriminalization of small amounts
There’s also a third option for easing marijuana laws, called decriminalization.
It’s not the same as legalization. It would mean that people still get in trouble for having marijuana. But instead of facing arrest and a possible criminal record, they would be given a civil citation, similar to a traffic ticket.
The poll found 67% of North Carolinians like that idea, compared to 20% who don’t.
And that’s the idea that has backing from some of the state’s most high-profile politicians, including Attorney General Josh Stein, the state’s top law enforcement official. Stein, a Democrat, was co-chair of a task force on criminal justice reforms that Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper formed last year in response to the summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.
“I like the decriminalization step first,” before legalization, Stein at one meeting told members of the task force, who included cops and judges in addition to activists and professors. In the end, the task force recommended that the N.C. General Assembly pass a law decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana, and also study the pros and cons of medical marijuana.
Other Democrats, like Harrison, are more gung-ho for medical marijuana. She said there’s evidence that it would help fight the opioid epidemic in North Carolina, since people would be able to treat pain without prescription pills.
“The opioid piece of it is big,” she said. “The states that have medical marijuana have much lower opioid addiction rates.”
Ramquist said that NORML is willing to work with lawmakers on whatever piece of the puzzle they want. The biggest reason there hasn’t been movement yet, she said, is that legislators don’t realize how popular it would be if they acted.
The data from Elon’s polling tends to back that up, particularly for medical marijuana.
“Unless a member of the General Assembly is in a very conservative, extremely religious district, they’re not likely to lose votes for supporting it,” Husser said. “It has support across all demographic groups.”
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This story was originally published February 11, 2021 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Medical marijuana has broad support in NC, Elon Poll finds. Will that lead to action?."
