A growing number of Hawaii residents want marijuana to be legalized for recreational use, a poll released Thursday by the Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii shows.
Roughly 65 percent of respondents to the survey conducted in December support decriminalization — up from 58 percent in 2012.
An even larger number — 73 percent — support legalization of recreational pot use with taxation and regulations. That compared with 57 percent who supported legalization in 2012.
On the neighbor islands, support for both decriminalization and legalization surpassed 80 percent, according to the survey.
“It is clear that not only does the support for these common sense drug policies remain strong, but that it just keeps increasing,” Carl Bergquist, executive director of the Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii, a nonprofit group, said in a news release. box
Lawmakers are considering a measure — House Bill 107 — aimed at decriminalizing the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana, but it has yet to be heard in the House Judiciary Committee. Senate Bill 548, which proposed legalization, died.
However, support is increasing as cannabis is losing its stigma, Bergquist said.
“People are seeing in other states that the sky has not fallen when they have decriminalized cannabis possession or like 20 percent of the U.S. population, legalized it,” he added. “They know that it has been used as a form of medicine since 2000 in our state so the notion that it’s dangerous is absurd.”
Other reasons support is growing for legalizing the drug include “a crying need for more state revenues” and “a clear need to do something to turn the tide on the failed and cruel war on drugs,” he said.
Honolulu-based Anthology Marketing Group conducted the online and telephone survey of 415 residents as the state’s first medical marijuana dispensaries prepare to open in a few months. Four of eight Hawaii’s first eight dispensaries got the green light this month to start growing legal pakalolo.
Hawaii legalized medical cannabis in 2000, but patients did not have a legal way to obtain the drug. Act 241, passed in 2015, allowed the state to issue eight licenses for a total of 16 production centers and 16 dispensaries: three on Oahu, one on Kauai and two each on Maui and Hawaii island. Dispensaries were allowed to open as early as July 15, but are waiting for the state’s monitoring systems that track the drugs to come online before business can begin.
