Republicans are turning against legal marijuana
Republicans are turning against legal marijuana
- April 20, 2026
- Michael Tesler, political science, explains in this piece for Good Authority
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“Today is 4/20, the holiday dedicated to cannabis culture and consumption. Four years ago on this date, I wrote a piece for FiveThirtyEight about how congressional Republicans’ widespread opposition to a 2022 bill decriminalizing marijuana was increasingly out of step with the views of their constituents.
Not only was there majority support for legalization in all 50 states at that time, but there was a sharp increase in the share of Republicans who supported legal weed from 2014 to 2022. Polling from the early 2020s, in fact, consistently showed that pluralities, if not majorities, of Republicans supported legalizing cannabis for recreational use.
But that upward trend in GOP support dramatically reversed itself over the past few years.”
Continue reading at Good Authority.
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