Pubdate: Fri, 07 Mar 2014
Source: Forbes Magazine (US)
Copyright: 2014 Forbes Inc.
Contact:  http://www.forbes.com/forbes/current/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/769
Author: Jacob Sullum

POT PROHIBITIONIST AT CPAC SAYS HE IS 'FIGHTING AGAINST THE TIDE'

Yesterday The Atlantic's Molly Ball BLL +0.25% attended a debate about
marijuana legalization at the Conservative Political Action Conference
(CPAC) and came away convinced that critics of the war on drugs are
ascendant within the conservative movement.

The debate pitted conservative blogger and Fox News commentator Mary
Katharine Ham against Christopher Beach, a producer for former drug
czar Bill Bennett's radio show.

Ball reports that the discussion "turned out to be surprisingly
one-sided," with the audience, or at least the most vocal parts of
it, overwhelmingly in favor of legalization, the position taken by
Ham.

Ball acknowledges that CPAC skews young and libertarian, but she
says Beach told her he typically gets a hostile response when he
defends prohibition in the company of fellow conservatives. "There
used to be a strong conservative coalition opposed to drugs, but
it's dissipated in the face of mounting public support for
legalization," Beach say. "We're fighting against the tide on this."

To longtime opponents of the war on drugs, those are pretty startling
words. Back in the 1980s, when I started writing about drug
prohibition, Gallup found that less than a quarter of Americans
thought marijuana should be legal. My own father wanted to know
whether I really believed what I was saying or was just in it for the
money. I am not sure which answer would have been worse from his
perspective. Eventually he decided that advocating drug legalization
was a respectable position, since it had attracted support from
serious people like Milton Friedman and Bill Buckley. Today he mails
me clippings about medical marijuana from Israeli newspapers.

My father, who will turn 89 this year, is part of "the only age group
that still opposes legalizing marijuana," according to a Gallup poll
conducted last fall. Overall support for legalization was 58 percent
in that poll, and the breakdown by age went like this:

18 to 29: 67 percent

30 to 49: 62 percent

50 to 64: 56 percent

65+: 45 percent

The results were similar in a CNN poll conducted in January:

Two-thirds of those 18 to 34 said marijuana should be legal, with 64%
of those 34 to 49 in agreement.

Half of those 50 to 64 believe marijuana should be legal, but that
number dropped to 39% for those age 65 and older.

According to Gallup, only 35 percent of Republicans favor marijuana
legalization, meaning they are more inclined to support pot prohibition
than retirees are. As Ball observes, this situation creates a dilemma
for the Republican Party:

The situation closely parallels the party's predicament on gay
marriage, which most Republicans still oppose even as widening
majorities of the broader public support it.

It adds up to a quandary for the GOP: Should it embrace the unpopular
position still disproportionately favored by its members and risk
marginalization as a result? Or will the burgeoning conservative
voices in favor of legalization win out? Simply put, do Republicans
want to be on the losing side of yet another culture war?

It will be interesting to see how they answer that question. In the
meantime, I am trying to get used to the weird feeling of swimming
with the tide.
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MAP posted-by: Matt