A poll conducted by the Paul Simon Public Policy institute this week found that there is overwhelming support for the legalization of marijuana in Illinois. But what’s even more interesting is that the poll breaks down how certain geographical areas in the state and different political parties feel about the measure.
At first glance, this is unsurprising – Chicago favors legalization by staggering 52 percentage points and decriminalization by even more (64 points). The suburbs are slightly less. Then, when the poll is broken down by political party, we see that weed legalization isn’t really that partisan of an issue anymore – in fact, 54% of downstate residents surveyed, (generally some of the last to come around on these sorts of things) surveyed actually are in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana. The case is the same with 52% of the state’s total Republican population.
My, how the times are changing, folks. To read the full poll, and to jump into the data, click here.
This comes on the heels of legislation introduced last week to do just that – legalize recreational marijuana, though it could take some time. Regardless of whether you use marijuana recreationally or not, legalizing in a state like Illinois would inevitably reduce the tax-payer burden for a non-violent prison population, as well as provide some much-needed tax revenue for a state in such dire shape as Illinois is.