As a Deadline for Legalizing Marijuana in Illinois Approaches, a New Poll Finds Strong Public Support

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and his allies in the state legislature have only one week left in the current session to pass a bill legalizing marijuana for recreational use. Whether they succeed will depend partly on whether legislators believe they have the support of most voters, and a recent poll indicates they do, reinforcing the results of an earlier survey.

In the new poll, commissioned by Think Big Illinois and conducted by the Global Strategy Group in late April and early May with a sample of 802 registered voters, 60 percent of respondents said they supported “legalizing recreational marijuana, taxing it, and regulating it just like alcohol,” while 35 percent opposed that policy. Those results are similar to the numbers from a March poll of 1,000 registered voters by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, which found that 66 percent favored “the legalization of recreational marijuana if taxed and regulated like alcohol.” Given the statistical margins of error (plus or minus 3.5 and 3.1 percentage points, respectively), these findings are essentially the same. [Read more at Reason]