Medical Marijuana: New Nationwide Poll Shows 2-1 Public Support

A professionally conducted poll of 1,002 Americans between February 5 and 9 found two-to-one or greater support for allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana for seriously or terminally ill patients. This poll was conducted by Lake Research, and International Communications Research, for the Lindesmith Center, a drug-policy organization.

Two questions were asked:

(1) "Should doctors be able to prescribe marijuana for medical purposes to seriously or terminally ill patients?" The response was 60% in favor, 30% opposed, nine percent don't know, one percent refused to answer.

(2) "As you may know, voters in two states recently passed laws allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana to seriously ill patients for medical purposes. The federal government says that doctors who prescribe are violating federal law, and has threatened to prosecute them or suspend their license. Which comes closer to your views: doctors should be able to prescribe marijuana for medical use in states where it is allowed by law, or the federal government should penalize doctors who prescribe marijuana, regardless of whether state law allows them to?" The response was 68% allow doctors to prescribe, 24% penalize those doctors, two percent do not agree with either, four percent are unsure, and one percent refused to answer. (The order of the two responses was changed when the question was asked, to avoid biasing the results by having one choice consistently offered first.)