Swindon, United Kingdom: Eighty-six percent of Britons support the use of marijuana under a doctor’s supervision, and more than four in ten support the drug’s legalization, according to a poll of 2,600 people living in the United Kingdom and Scotland conducted by the Economic & Social Research Council.
The percentage of Britons backing marijuana legalization is more than three times as high as the percentage who supported legalizing the drug in 1983.
A recent Zogby poll of 1,204 likely voters revealed similar attitudes among Americans, noting that 41 percent of the public believe “the government should treat marijuana more or less the same way it treats alcohol: it should regulate marijuana, control it, tax it, and only make it illegal for children.”
NORML Foundation Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said the British poll results were not surprising. “Like the American public, Britons are gradually coming around to the understanding that a legally regulated market for marijuana, with age and quality controls, is far better than the unregulated black market that exists today,” he said.
The British Parliament is currently considering downgrading marijuana possession to a non-arrestable offense. That legal change is expected to be implemented by early 2004. In addition, Parliament’s Medicine’s and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency is expected to license the country’s first cannabis-based medicines later this year.
For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre or Paul Armentano of the NORML Foundation at (202) 483-8751.