Fifty-five percent of those surveyed think using pot should be legal. Poll: Most want pot legalized

A majority of Americans think marijuana should be legal, a new poll finds, with support steadily increasing over the past few years.

Fifty-five percent of those surveyed thought using pot should be legal, according to a CNN/ORC International poll released Monday night, compared with 44 percent who said it should not be.


Among those aged 18 to 34, support was 67 percent to 32 percent, and for those 35 to 49 years old, it was 64 percent to 34 percent.

According to General Social Survey trends, this year is the first time that more Americans support legalizing marijuana than oppose it.

Most Americans also disagree that pot is physically and psychologically harmful, and by a smaller margin disagree that using marijuana leads to using other drugs. A slim majority, 50 percent to 48 percent, believe it is addictive.

Only 35 percent of those surveyed believed smoking weed was morally wrong, compared with 57 percent who thought the same about abortion, 50 percent who said so about homosexual behavior and 46 percent who thought so about looking at a pornographic magazine.

Fifty-two percent of those surveyed also said they had tried marijuana.

Along with changing attitudes, legalized marijuana has been making gains legislatively in recent years. Just last week, Colorado became the first place in the nation to start selling pot for recreational use, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is using executive powers to make New York the 21st state to allow some medical use of marijuana.

CNN and ORC interviewed 1,010 adults from Jan. 3 to 5 for the poll, which has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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