As you probably heard recently, President Obama told The New Yorker during an interview that he does not think that marijuana is “more dangerous than alcohol”. I personally was quite interested in his comments, as I had actually gotten into a debate on the topic with some friends not long before Obama’s statement made headlines.
In fact, as a result of that initial debate with friends, I was so curious how the rest of America felt on the issue that we included questions on that very topic in a recent VeraQuest poll of 1,514 U.S. adults. These survey responses were collected in the days prior to President Obama’s statement going public, so Americans’ opinions in this poll were unaffected by the President’s public stance on the matter.
It turns out that the vast majority of Americans agree with the President. To the over-arching question of “Which substance do you feel is more “dangerous” overall?”, about half (51%) of Americans said “alcohol”, only 7% said “marijuana”, 33% said “both about the same”, and 9% indicated they were unsure.
Democrats were more likely than Republicans to single out alcohol as being more dangerous than marijuana (59% of Democrats vs. 39% of Republicans). Republicans, on the other hand, were more likely to believe the two substances to be equally dangerous (41% vs. 28% among Democrats). Although Republicans were also more likely than Democrats to say that marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol, those who felt that way were certainly in the very small minority (13% of Republicans vs. 4% of Democrats). So it would seem that both Democrats and Republicans agreed with the President that marijuana is not more dangerous than alcohol…well, before his statement went public and the topic had a chance to become political, anyway.
We asked the alcohol vs. marijuana question for a variety of more-specific “dangers” as well, and in all cases the majority of Americans indicated they believed alcohol to be “worse” than marijuana or they believed them to be about the same. In no specific instance asked about in our survey was marijuana considered “worse” than alcohol.
What effect do you think President Obama’s statement will have on Americans’ opinions on this topic? In what specific ways, if any, do you feel marijuana might be more dangerous than alcohol?
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