Support for Marijuana Reaches New High

Dating back to 1971, when five high school students in San Rafael, California, met up at 4:20 pm to search for an abandoned cannabis crop, April 20, i.e. 4/20, has become an international counterculture holiday, celebrating cannabis culture and consumption. While smoking marijuana has long been a symbol of civil disobedience, public acceptance of marijuana for medicinal or recreational use has grown in recent years.

According to a survey conducted regularly by Gallup, a record-high of 68 percent of U.S. adults said they were in favor of legalizing marijuana last year. That’s an increase of more than 20 percentage points over the past decade, coinciding with more and more states passing ballot initiatives in favor of legal weed.

Medical marijuana has gained far more traction than recreational pot use over the last two decades. Since California passed the first medical marijuana bill in 1996, a large majority of states across the country have followed suit to allow for the sale, possession and consumption of medical marijuana to specially licensed people. The legalization of recreational weed is a new growing trend among states, with Colorado and Washington becoming the first to do so in 2012. While only a few other states have fully legalized weed’s recreational use, many others have decriminalized the drug and legalized recreational use of the less potent cannabidiol (CBD).