Sunday, February 22, 2009

Medicinal Marijuana

The state of New Jersey has had numerous campaigns over the past several years affecting drug policy. There is currently a Compassionate Use Campaign initiated by the Drug Policy Alliance of New Jersey. This campaign hopes that people suffering from chronic illnesses will be able to use medicinal marijuana to alleviate pain from arthritis, cancers, and a number of other diseases.
Medicinal marijuana according to Drug Policy Alliance of New Jersey would be approved of by 86% of New Jersey citizens with a 4% margin of error. In 2006, the alliance ran a poll of 700 registered voters from New Jersey in different parts of the state. They found that a large number would be in favor of a new marijuana policy.
Those running for political office in the state should look to support the legalization of marijuana. The same poll showed that 62% of New Jerseyans would be more likely to vote for a candidate if they were in favor of legalizing the substance. 35% of people said they would be much more likely to vote for a candidate based on their marijuana stance. The poll did show however that marijuana was not a key issue for 21% of the voters and only 13% said that their support would not go to a candidate who was in favor of medicinal marijuana.
Does marijuana work? Many classes on drug use do not classify marijuana as a stimulant or a depressant, it is taught that marijuana will cause whatever the user believes it will cause. It is a fact that marijuana can dull the senses and often cause a blurred sense of reality. For this reason drug and alcohol abuse classes are misleading about the use of marijuana’s affects. Since smoking the product will dull the senses many people suffering from chronic diseases are looking to use it to heal their pain.


3 comments:

  1. It would be interesting to see the boundries of the survey of the 700 citizens which led to the extrapolation that 86% of New Jerseyians would be in favor. 700 is a rather small sample size for 6m+.

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  2. 8,724,xxx actually.

    That is .000008% of the population

    That is the equivilant of saying that .04 of a person is a representitive sample size for the will of Seton Hall University.

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  3. Actually, most public opinion polls at the state and national level survey around 1,000 people to achieve the standard +/- 3 margin of error percentage points. I don't think there is a problem with sample size. I would be interested in looking at the survey questions and how they were worded. A good post on FiveThirtyEight.com at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/02/americans-growing-kinder-to-bud.html shows that public opinion has changed quite a bit on this topic. But the results in most polls are still much different than the ones presented here.

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