What you’re seeing is the late stages of marijuana prohibition in America.
Two major political forces are finally coming together at the same time which have the probability of pushing Congress to legalize marijuana on the national and leave it up to the states.
The first major change is public opinion.
Gallup released its latest survey of Americans’ opinion on legal marijuana this week.
The survey found a record high of 66% of Americans now support legalizing marijuana.
That’s more than double the amount back in the year 2000 when only 31% of Americans were in favor of legalization.
The most notable surges in approval come in the demographic groups which have long been holdouts favoring continued prohibition.
One of the holdout groups has been registered Republicans. This latest survey showed a majority of Republicans, 53%, now favor of marijuana legalization.
Americans aged 55 and over, the other big holdout demographic group, has turned the corner too. This survey found 59% of them now support legalization, up from just 50% at this time last year.
Public opinion has clearly changed towards legalizing marijuana and a clear majority now favor legalizing it.
However, when it comes to a political issue like this, we know it’s just half the equation required to get legalization passed through Congress.
The second major change is just as important as public opinion -- money.
The Seed Investor may be a bit cynical, but money plays a huge role in everything political. That’s changed too.
The legal marijuana industry in the U.S. hit $8.5 billion in revenue last year.
Legal marijuana is now big business in the United States and it has the money to support political action.
There’s no way to track all of it. But if you look around, you can see it.
Just look at all of those state-based campaigns for legalization. They cost millions of dollars each. Across many states its easily in the tens of millions of dollars.
There’s also a massive surge in official lobbying spending for legal marijuana now.
Open Secrets found official expenditures on lobbying for legalization in Washington, D.C. has surged 1,963% from $80,000 to $1.65 million over the last four years.
The Seed Investor believes these two forces – overwhelming popularity and big money backing – will combine to legalize marijuana at the federal level sooner than later.
We’re not alone in seeing it either. We’re in good company when this guy who predicted Trump’s win in 2016 sees the U.S. legalizing marijuana too.
Latest Gallup Survey Finds 66% Of Americans Support Legal Marijuana, More Than Ever Before
