It seems that cannabis is even becoming more mainstream with members of the Republican party in Congress.
A recent poll was conducted by Fabrizio, Lee & Associates on behalf of the National Cannabis Roundtable (NCR). Fabrizio, Lee & Associates are well-known Republican pollsters.
What they found from Republicans was that they don’t believe the federal government should have control over the states’ decisions on cannabis.
In fact, they found that 76% of Republican voters believe that cannabis decisions should be made by each individual state and that the federal government should not be making cannabis decisions on a national level.
Furthermore, those polled indicated that the federal government should actually be removing obstacles to cannabis legalization on the federal level.
Similarly, the poll found that around 73% of Republicans are in agreement that any legal cannabis business should have the same rights as any other legally operating business. There shouldn’t be distinctions made just because they are a cannabis-related business.
There were also 73% of Republican voters who support the legalization of cannabis for medical purposes.
There were some other findings from this recent poll that are of interest as well. When it comes to the question of legal cannabis businesses being able to use our standard banking systems 65% of Republicans said they should be able to just like any other legal business.
Just over half of Republicans, 51%, indicated that legal cannabis companies should be able to sell stock and be listed on stock exchanges so that they have full access to our capital marketing system just like other businesses.
Not surprisingly, Republican voters are more hesitant about opening up the adult-use recreational cannabis market. But there still seems to be an open door there as well. Around 47% of respondents supported legalizing adult-use cannabis and 46% said that they were opposed to it.
One other topic of interest from the poll had to do with expunging past convictions for people who now live in states that allow adult-use recreational cannabis use. 56% of Republicans indicated that they are in favor of expunging past convictions for people who are living in that situation today.
“These findings support what I’ve been saying for years: cannabis is no longer the partisan issue it once was,” said Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus. “Congress needs to act in a bipartisan manner and enact the change that Americans, both Republicans and Democrats alike, are calling for. It’s past time for the federal government to respect the will of the states that have legalized cannabis in some form and allow them to make their own decisions in the best interest of their constituents without interference from Washington.”
It seems that overall Republicans are at least warming up to the idea of further cannabis legalization even if they plan to go about it differently than their Democratic counterparts.
“There’s been a massive shift in opinion, and it’s evidently clear that Republicans have extremely positive attitudes towards legal cannabis,” said former Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., an NCR advisory board member. “We’ll likely see support for legal cannabis continue to increase this November when Republicans in at least a half dozen states and counties vote on legalization and other issues. Which is why it’s time for Congress to enact common sense cannabis reform this year, starting with key pieces of legislation like SAFE Banking and CLIMB.”
These findings may come as a surprise to some as Republicans are traditionally more conservative in their views about cannabis. But many Republicans are also for less federal government and less federal government oversight. Which would make sense as to why they are in favor of the individual states having the right to make these decisions.
Congressional midterm elections are only a few short months away so it will be interesting to see how cannabis-related views play out in the upcoming elections.
