Voters are poised to give a sweeping endorsement of legalizing marijuana, with ballot measures in five states on the verge of passing on Election Day, potentially setting the stage for loosening federal controls on the drug.

California -- home to 40 million people and the world’s sixth-largest economy -- is likely to relax its restrictions on pot for recreational use, according to the latest polls. And similar measures in Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada also have slight leads. Supporters believe a California victory, let alone a sweep in all five states, could be what they need to change the federal discussion about the drug, which is currently on par with heroin under U.S. law.


"I've been calling 2016 the game-over year,” said Bill Piper of the Drug Policy Alliance, a pro-legalization group. “Because if California wins, that's going to put enormous pressure on Congress to end marijuana prohibition. If all five win, that's even better. If California legalizes, it's going to become much harder for Congress not to do anything."

Supporters of looser pot laws clearly have the momentum when it comes to public opinion. A new Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Americans, including around two in five Republicans, support legalized marijuana now — up from about 25 percent two decades ago, around the time California legalized it for medical use.

Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana just four years ago, and were joined by Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C., two years later.

Voters in another three states — Arkansas, Florida and North Dakota — will consider whether to legalize medical marijuana on Tuesday, while Montana has a ballot measure that would remove restrictions from the state's current medical marijuana law. Success in those states would make medical marijuana legal in a clear majority of states.

Even so, the opponents to the marijuana ballot measures -- themselves well-funded and well-organized -- say that legalization or any measures that make it easier for vendors to get banking services will hardly be a done deal, no matter what happens in November.

Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which has bipartisan backers like former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and David Frum, a speechwriter for George W. Bush, has tagged the efforts to expand legalized marijuana as a sequel to "Big Tobacco" — an attempt to prioritize corporate profits over public health.

"The battle for settling the question of legalization will not end this November, or November 2020," said Kevin Sabet, who worked on drug policy in the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations and is now the group's president.

Sabet was equally skeptical that a run of success at the ballot box this month would move Congress to take steps short of legalization anytime soon.

"I don't foresee Congress moving to make marijuana legal anytime soon," he said. "California medicalized marijuana 20 years ago — Congress still does not recognize smoked marijuana as medicine. All this talk of a 'tipping point' is marijuana business rhetoric."

The pro-marijuana forces don't see it that way. Their allies in Congress plan to start just after Election Day with a series of incremental efforts to ease federal restrictions on the marijuana trade.

Lawmakers face a Dec. 9 deadline for passing another government funding bill. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said he and other members would push to add a measure championed by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.) that seeks to absolve banks of any punishment for doing business with legal pot dealers.

Currently, sellers of both recreational and medical marijuana have problems getting accounts at banks, which are wary of handling profits from the sales of a product that the Drug Enforcement Administration continues to classify as an easily abused drug without medical benefits.

That's forced the recreational pot business to traffic mostly in cash, making retailers worried about robbery and more likely to rely on armored cars to pick up their profits.

Because marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, legal retailers in the states also can't deduct the cost of normal business operations like employee salaries or rent, under a 1980s-era law targeting drug traffickers. That means above-board marijuana businesses can pay effective tax rates of 70 percent or higher, according to the National Cannabis Industry Association.

Blumenauer has long sponsored a measure to exempt legal marijuana merchants from the law barring them from using normal business deductions, a measure that's also supported by GOP lawmakers with a libertarian bent, like Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, and Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform.

It's unlikely that bill could pass Congress as a standalone measure. But Blumenauer also noted that his fellow Oregon Democrat, Ron Wyden, is the bill's sponsor in the Senate and on track to become Finance chairman again if Democrats take control — giving the measure's supporters more opportunity to slip it into larger packages.

Still, there are several reasons to think that the current marijuana restrictions won't go down without a fight. Some marijuana opponents on Capitol Hill are powerful and entrenched themselves, like Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). And lawmakers seeking to whittle down federal marijuana restrictions in this year's appropriations process have largely come up empty, despite some encouraging early progress.

That’s not deterring Blumenauer. He has traveled to Arizona and Nevada, both states where casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is bankrolling anti-legalization efforts, to stump for the ballot measures.

“We really do have the momentum here,” he said. “And that’s largely because this is an effort that’s been driven by the voters themselves.”