Massachusetts Medical Marijuana Initiative Set to Win in a Landslide

A survey of 502 likely Massachusetts voters, conducted between September 21 and September 27, has support for Question 3 at 69%, with just 22% opposed and 9% undecided. Every single demographic has majority support for the ballot question, with the lowest being Republicans at 51% and the highest being Democrats at 78%.

Take note presidential candidates, self identified Obama supporters back the initiative by 76% and Romney supporters by 51%. The people are ready for legalized access to medical cannabis, why aren’t you?

Read more information on the poll here.

Learn more information about cannabis and the 2012 election by reading NORML’s voter guide, Smoke the Vote.

Massachusetts’ Medical Marijuana Initiative, Question 3, Maintains Strong Lead

Suffolk University, in conjuncture with 7NEWS, just released new polling data for Massachusetts’ medical marijuana initiative, Question 3. The new survey of 600 likely Massachusetts voters had support for the initiative at 59%, opposition at 35%, and 6% undecided. This poll was conducted from September 13th-16th. More details are available here.

This is an increase in support from previous polling released at the end of August, which had support at 58%, opposition at 27%, and undecided at 15%. Judging from the solid lead and continued upward trend in polling, it is very likely Massachusetts will become the 18th state to have legalized medical use of cannabis this fall.

Stay up to date on marijuana in the 2012 election by visiting NORML’s online voter guide “Smoke the Vote” here.

Obama’s Opportunity: Will the White House Snub Marijuana Yet Again?

Last week, the White House launched the next in its long line of social media engagement initiatives, this one entitled “Your Interview With the President.” The concept was simple, anyone could upload their question to the President on YouTube, others would vote on them, and the highest rated ones would be posed to the Commander in Chief in a Google+ Hangout on January 30th.

This seemed to be a logical opportunity to ask the administration about marijuana legalization. Last Tuesday, I posted NORML’s question to the White House YouTube page for consideration. We asked, “With over 850,000 Americans arrested in 2010, on marijuana charges alone, and tens of billions of tax dollars being spent locking up marijuana users, isn’t it time to regulate and tax marijuana?”

The reception was overwhelmingly positive, in just several hours the question received over 4,000 “thumbs up” votes and was one of, if not the, most popular question on the service. Then a peculiar thing happened, the question was removed. After becoming the most positively voted upon question in less than a day, the White House removed the question, deeming it “inappropriate.”

We informed our audience of the censorship and encouraged them to engage the White House on their own, using our question or a one of their own choosing. Over the next several days the program was inundated with marijuana law reform questions. At first, many met the same fate as our original question and were removed from the site. It seems our persistence ended up paying off and the page administrator finally gave up trying to censor the incoming questions and most marijuana inquiries have remained up since.

Voting closed last night at midnight and I made some rough calculations of the final results to see how we performed. Of the top 160 questions asked, marijuana reform questions accounted for 105 of them. Reposts of our question brought in an estimated 17,524 up-votes in addition to the 4,028 the original received before being removed. Combined, that is over 21,000 votes for one question, which is 5 times as many votes as any other question on the page. The 105 marijuana reform questions in the top 160 brought in over 74,000 votes, dwarfing any other topic. Our friends at LEAP posted a question as well and it ended as one of the top rated questions. You can read their coverage here.

Now, we wait. “Your Interview With the President” is scheduled to take place tomorrow, January 30th. Considering this is the same individual who previously stated that, “we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws” and that legalization is a “perfectly legitimate topic for debate,” maybe he will take this opportunity to address the issue seriously for once. In an election year, this could go a long way towards winning back those who feel disenfranchised with the administration over a perceived lack of progress on the issue and amped up raids on medical programs in states such as California and Colorado.

The American people are ready for our debate Mr. President, are you?