There are two political issues that for the last 10 years I’ve been predicting would reach a sudden tipping point. The first is gay marriage and within the last couple years we’ve seen it go from a controversial issue to, now, 17 or 18 states making it legal. The second is legalization of marijuana. It’s an odd one because polling generally reveals that more than 50% of Americans favor legalization yet it somehow stays illegal on the federal level. But much like gay marriage, the states are leading the charge. Currently more than half of the US population lives in states where either medical or recreational marijuana use is legal. But the DEA has continued to bust dispensaries in those states on federal charges, which continues many of the same problems that legalization was intended to address.
So the fact that medical marijuana offers one of the few examples of across-the-aisle-cooperation in the House is a big sign of progress on that issue. I predict that the holdouts will soon figure out that there’s little to be gained opposing reasonable legalization.
The Original Spin 