Over the past four decades, the General Social Survey (GSS) has been measuring societal trends in the U.S., and for the first time since 1975, the survey has found that a majority of Americans support marijuana legalization.
According to a data analysis by the Associated Press, 52 percent of Americans believe that cannabis should be legal—a big 9 percent jump in support since the question was last asked by GSS pollsters in 2012. In fact, the numbers have been drastically rising since 1990. Twenty-five years ago, only 16 percent of the population supported legal pot.
Forty-two percent of respondents to the latest poll said marijuana should be illegal.
This isn’t the first report to note that a majority of Americans are in favor of legalization. In October 2013, a Gallup poll found that 58 percent of U.S. citizens approved of legal weed, and in April 2013, the Pew Research Center released data that showed 52 percent of Americans supported legalization efforts.
