Survey on Legalization of Medical Marijuana Bring Strong Opinions

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(Vocus) July 1, 2010 -- The legalization and taxation of medical marijuana brings out many opinions, as the opinion poll at TestCountry.org recently learned. The Health and Drug testing content website (http://www.testcountry.org/) testcountry.org conducted a Medical Marijuana Legalization Survey and received an overwhelming response. The poll asked Should Marijuana Be Legalized & Taxed? More than 2,000 people responded, and an overwhelming majority felt that medical marijuana should be legalized (73 percent total). More than half the respondents thought it should be legal and taxed (55 percent). Only 22 percent of those who took the survey thought the drug should never be made legal.

With those results, TestCountry.org decided to dig deeper into the discussion by scanning and studying almost 5,000 blog comments from different newspaper articles and blogs on the subject (For a partial list of articles that reader comments analyzed is listed on Medical Marijuana Legalization Study (http://www.testcountry.org/legalization-of-medical-marijuana.htm). The individual posts were categorized based on specific positions and a comprehensive analysis was compiled. The goal of the study was to understand the reasons behind the pro and con positions on this controversial subject, not to determine which position have more supporters. The results are presented below (Most reader comments included more than one reason for their pro or con position so the total of each position exceeds 100%):

PROS:    

Medical usefulness     48%

Crime and law enforcement    41%

Potential positive impact on economy and public finance     33%

Safer to use than some other prohibited drugs and alcohol     24%

Industrial use     15%

CONS:    

Mental and physical health risk     68%

Substantial legal substitutes for marijuana’s medical attributes    32%

Social effects    32%

Crime and accident risks     26%

Tendency to lead to other drug use     16%

Based on the opinions of those who are in favor of legalizing medical marijuana, 48 percent pointed out the medical application and implications. The fact that there are many medical uses, particularly for chronic pain, and limited side effects were mentioned frequently. Overall, it was acknowledged that proper education and further research on the medical benefits of marijuana would be needed to change negative public stigma.

Forty-one percent felt that legalization of medical marijuana would eventually curb the hard drug abuse, as well as lower the crime rate by crippling drug cartels from smuggling marijuana and other drugs into the country. In addition, this group believed that legalization would lessen the load on the judicial system, thus more savings, on not prosecuting marijuana offenders or users to that effect.

Those who oppose the legalization of medical marijuana (http://www.testcountry.org/legalization-of-medical-marijuana.htm) also presented varied reasons for their opinion. The vast majority—68 percent—argued the mental and physical health risks of prolonged use. Two opinion tied at a distant second in the results. Thirty-two percent were opposed due to the social implications that could be involved, believing it might open the door for those who would manipulate laws and illegally obtain marijuana for personal use, without a valid medical reason. That same number of people opposed legalization because they felt there were safer, alternative (legal) substitutes.

The full results and analysis of the analysis, along with the partial list of blogs and articles used for content can be found at http://www.testcountry.org/legalization-of-medical-marijuana.htm .

About TestCountry.Org

TestCountry.org is a website dedicated to health and drug testing subjects. Website content includes facts, opinions, articles, resources and other information about anything related to testing and testing kits. Some of the topics include drug testing kits (http://www.testcountry.com/), employee and workplace drug testing, steroid testing, prescription drug testing and more. TestCountry.org also provides a large list of testing websites under its Health Pages Directory (http://www.testcountry.org/directory/), comprehensive city health guides (http://www.testcountry.org/city-testing-guides) for the largest 25 metro areas in US.

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