It’s election day and pot-law reformers are out giving a final push in favor of measures in several states, including Prop 19, California’s legalize, tax-and-regulate measure.
While pot proponents in the Golden State still sound optimistic, it’s not clear they’ll have the votes to push the measure over the top. Earlier polls looked good; in the last couple of weeks, however, support seems to be slumping. Still, supporters of Prop 19 paid for a spread in both the Sunday and Monday editions of the Los Angeles Times in a last-minute voter education effort.
More troubling for pot-law reformers, however, is the chance that a medi-pot measure on the ballot in South Dakota will lose today – making S.D. the only state where medi-mari reforms have failed not once, but twice. Voters there narrowly defeated a medi-pot law in 2006 (a circumstance that some blamed on state lawmakers jacking with the ballot language in order to scare voters), with 48% in support. Now, however, a poll from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader shows Measure 13 trailing baaaadly, with just 32% of voters likely to cast their ballots in favor of the measure.
Nonetheless, the Drug Reform Coordination Network reports that, overall, Americans are moving ever closer to majority support for legalizing pot: A new Gallup poll released last week revealed an all-time high of 46% in favor of pot legalization. Majority support, they note, may just be a few years away.
This article appears in Rick Perry (Digital Edition).