New Poll Shows Ohio Support for Medical Marijuana at 73%

A recent KCCI poll shows support in Iowa at only 53%, with 9% undecided, still a majority but not quite as good as Ohio. Come on Iowa, we can do better.

Here is a link to the article.

The end of the article mentions the following:

"The Office of National Drug Control Policy's 2008 Marijuana Source Book reported that marijuana accounted for 40 percent of drug arrests nationally -- but only 2.5 percent of inmates in state prisons across the nation are there for marijuana-only offenses.

The report disputes the notion that marijuana can be legalized for medical use without creeping into the rest of the population. It cites federal statistics that show eight of the 10 states with the highest percentage of residents who used marijuana within the past month also were states with medical marijuana programs. Five of the 10 states with the highest percentage of new youth marijuana users also had medical marijuana programs in place. "


I followed the link to Marijuana Source Book but the information wasn't there. This statistic peaks my curiosity so I'll check up on it later -- because this seems to contradict findings in a recnt state-sponsored student survey in California that found marijuana use among students have gone down since 1995 (see page 25) but remained relatively stable in recent years.

BTW, I obviously hate the ONDCP and recommend a book called "Lies, damned lies, and drug war statistics" By Matthew B. Robinson, Renee G. Scherlen.

The authors speak at the Cato Institute in this video.

If you want to become even more agitated at the ONDCP, watch this Video link to Congress's Domestic Subcommittee oversight hearing on The National Drug Control Strategy, Budget, and Compliance: Priorities and Accountability at ONDCP. Its frustrating when you hear how much is spent on futile efforts on supply side reduction when all the evidence points to the fact that it SIMPLY DOES NOT WORK, and this guy can say with a straight face that he cares about the well being of the American people -- that he actually wants drug use to decline in the county. I beg to differ. Well alas, I guess we won't have to deal with him anymore.

There's is a new drug czar now...who's been recently quoted as saying this:

"Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a 'war on drugs' or a 'war on a product,' people see a war as a war on them," he said. "We're not at war with people in this country."

It's gonna take a little more than just a slight change in catch phrases and rhetoric to fix our current state of affairs but I shall try and be optimistic. The comments in the story also seem very encouraging...