The Arizona Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol is gathering signatures to put marijuana legalization on the 2016 ballot. Earlier this month the campaign announced that it had crossed the 200,000 signatures mark. The campaign needs to gather 150,642 valid signatures in order to get on the ballot. Signature gathering efforts are going well, but a poll (put out by an opponent organization called Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy) found just 43% support for legalization. Per AZ Central:

If a vote were taken today, Arizonans could reject an initiative to legalize recreational use of marijuana by adults, according to a poll released by the campaign opposing the plan. The survey shows 43 percent of likely voters support legalizing marijuana for recreational use while 49 percent would vote against it. About 8 percent of likely voters were undecided. The telephone survey has a margin of error of about 4 percent.

These poll results should be taken with a grain of salt. Often times (but not all times) polls are skewed in favor of a ‘no’ vote. That’s due to the fact that a lot of people out there don’t want to answer ‘yes’ to a marijuana legalization poll out of fear. But when it comes time to actually vote, some of the ‘no’ votes turn into ‘yes’ votes because it’s a private act. I think it’s also worth pointing out that the poll was conducted via telephone, which can skew results since it involves an older-than-actual polling pool.

But regardless of any concerns about the poll results, which again was put out by the opposition, this is a learning opportunity for people that live in Arizona and/or are involved in the campaign. If you check out the article I linked to, you will see that when people were asked about some reefer madness scenarios, they were more likely to be pushed away from voting in favor of legalization. It’s proof that there are a lot of people that are on the fence about the initiative, and whoever wins the awareness battle is going to likely win the campaign. Spread the truth, share facts, make sure to keep gathering those signatures!