Oakland, CA: Seventy percent of voters in the city of Oakland support the legalization of marijuana for personal use, according to the results of citywide poll conducted by David Binder Research.
California NORML Coordinator Dale Gieringer said that the results signified “a turning point in public opinion,” noting that it was “the largest margin for legalization ever recorded in any poll.”
Four hundred likely voters participated in the poll, which also found that 61 percent of voters believed that legalizing and regulating marijuana would dissuade users from trying harder drugs.
Sixty-five percent of respondents also said that they favored Oakland’s Measure Z, a citywide initiative that seeks to “make the investigation, citation, and arrest for private adult cannabis offenses the [city’s] lowest enforcement priority.” If approved by Oakland voters in November, the initiative will also require city officials to “establish a system to license, tax and regulate cannabis for adult use as soon as possible under California law.”
For more information, please contact either California NORML Coordinator Dale Gieringer at (415) 563-5858 or Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director of the NORML Foundation, at (202) 483-5500. A summary of pending state and local ballot initiatives is available online at:
http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6172