Medical pot advocates roll out poll showing support - The Denver Post

Medical pot advocates roll out poll showing support - The Denver Post

Medical marijuana advocates released a poll Monday they said shows overwhelming support — by a 2-to-1 margin — for licensing and regulating cannabis dispensaries popping up across Colorado.

The poll comes as lawmakers are drafting legislation to regulate the burgeoning industry, a response to legal developments that have left local governments and medical marijuana dispensaries seeking clarity.

"There's vast public support for responsibly regulated medical marijuana," said Matt Brown, executive director of Coloradoans for Medical Marijuana Regulation, a coalition of dispensaries and growers that helped sponsor the poll.

However, Attorney General John Suthers, a Republican who has opposed medical marijuana as violating federal law, made little of the poll results.

"It's easy to say in a vacuum that voters support the type of medical marijuana distribution system that the dispensary owners advocate, but the devil is in the details," Suthers said. "Once the voters understand the full extent that the current system is being abused to allow healthy young people to procure marijuana, they will be much less likely to support it."

The telephone poll of 500 likely Colorado voters asked just one question regarding medical marijuana.

In the survey, which had a margin of error of 4.38 percent, respondents were first told there were "some proposals that voters might be voting on in the election next November."