Patch Readers Overwhelmingly Support Medical Marijuana

Earlier this week, we asked readers to weigh in on a question that has been asked in Masachusetts for several years now:

We put together a poll asking if people support various degrees of legalization or decriminalization for medical purposes, if they support legalizing, regulating and taxing pot with no prescription required, or if they do not support such initiatives under any circumstances.

We knew this would be a topic of interest, but we were not prepared for the outpouring of responses, nor the one-sided nature of respondents’ answers.

Without further ado, here is what our readers told us about medical marijuana.

Our poll generated 329 responses and, out of those, a whopping 284 people indicated they support legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana like alcohol—no prescription required.

That’s 86 percent of all respondents.

“More are educated each day!” Said commenter John Porter. “This plant should be free to grow by anyone. The medical and industrial uses of this plant are amazing and the side effects are among the safest and benign in all of history for such a powerful and useful plant. No one should have the authority to tell another what they can grow and use to help their own body. These people that prohibit it are not given any right under god to deny any other human on this earth from growing a plant.”

Reader Jennifer Valley echoed those sentiments.

“Prescription and doctors are barriers to the poor,” she wrote on our comments board. “Better to just legalize, tax, and regulate and allocate a portion of the taxes to mental health and treatment programs. Addiction is more about anxiety than it is about the drug itself in most cases. Treat the causes of addiction and you get better results than if you just treat the symptoms.”

The second largest bloc of voters were those who said they support legalizing marijuana for any patient whose doctor thinks they will benefit from it, even if the illness afflicting them is non-life threatening. Thirty-four readers, or 10 percent, voted this way.

Nine readers indicated they would not support legalizing pot for any purpose. This group made up two percent of all commenters.

We received no written comments from anyone who doesn’t support the full legalization, regulation and taxation of marijuana, indicating that, not only do they make up the largest bloc of voters, but they are also the most vocal.

The states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Washington, D.C., all already allow medical marijuana to varying degrees, and, according to our readers, Massachusetts should follow suit.

This question will likely appear on the ballot in the November election.