Posted on 11/18/2004 3:50:21 AM PST by cbkaty
BY THE NUMBERS A poll question commissioned by Texans for Medical Marijuana found a cross-section of support for its cause. The 2004 Texas Poll broke down the responses using the following criteria: • Age: 81 percent of those 18 to 29 and 72 percent of those 60 and older • Income : 74 percent of both those making less than $10,000 a year and those making $60,001 and above • Race/Ethnicity: 74 percent of anglos, 79 percent of Hispanics and 80 percent of blacks • Education: 69 percent of those who didn't graduate high school and 71 percent of those who did graduate work • Gender: 75 percent of both men and women
A strong majority of Texans favor legalizing the medical use of marijuana, according to a new poll.
Seventy-five percent said people with cancer and other serious illnesses should be allowed to use marijuana for medical purposes as long as their doctor approves, according to a Scripps Howard Texas poll question commissioned by Texans for Medical Marijuana. Nineteen percent said they would oppose such a bill.
"I'm surprised support is that high," said Dr. Richard Evans, president of the Texas Cancer Center and medical adviser to Texans for Medical Marijuana. "That should help when we next testify before the Legislature."
Bills that would have legalized the medical use of marijuana have been introduced in the last four sessions of the Texas Legislature but have never passed. Evans said he expects legislation again will be introduced in 2005.
Marijuana is considered to have some therapeutic uses, particularly the relief of nausea suffered by cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. As a result, 11 states, most of them in the West, have legalized its medical use.
In a report on the medical use of marijuana earlier this year, a committee of the Texas Medical Association called for more research into whether seriously ill patients would benefit from marijuana. It also said doctors should have the freedom to discuss with patients all treatment options, including marijuana, without fear of regulatory or criminal sanctions. It did not take a position on whether Texas should legalize marijuana's medical use.
The chairman of the TMA committee could not be reached for his reaction to the poll.
The telephone poll found Democrats were more supportive of medical marijuana than Republicans — 81 percent to 67 percent; and adults 18 to 29 favored it the most, at 81 percent, while those in their 40s favored it the least, at 70 percent. Seventy-two percent of those 60 and older favored it.
The marijuana question was part of the fall 2004 Texas Poll and was asked of 900 adult Texans by telephone Oct. 11-28. The margin of error is 3.3 percentage points.
BY THE NUMBERS
A poll question commissioned by Texans for Medical Marijuana found a cross-section of support for its cause. The 2004 Texas Poll broke down the responses using the following criteria:
• Age: 81 percent of those 18 to 29 and 72 percent of those 60 and older
• Income : 74 percent of both those making less than $10,000 a year and those making $60,001 and above
• Race/Ethnicity: 74 percent of anglos, 79 percent of Hispanics and 80 percent of blacks
• Education: 69 percent of those who didn't graduate high school and 71 percent of those who did graduate work
• Gender: 75 percent of both men and women
Lemme guess, another exit poll?
Exit poll... exiting the Rio Grande.
Only 25% of the people in Texas have a brain!
Now, be gone with your incrementalist, slippery-slope posts, the ultimate aim of which is to get marijuana legalized!
Why not legalize it? then tax it! make a fortune out of stoners!
Wow - this means that at least L2L is a closet totalitarian apposed to having folks make decisions for themselves.
You WOD Warriors are inspiration for us all. Clearly we cant allow such people, who are so very stupid, to take personal responsibility. We need and must have smart elitists like L2L tell us what we can and cannot take into our own bodies.
Oh thank heavens for L2L. What would we do without your brilliance?
I have no problem with the medical use of marijuana, but these surveys are propaganda used by people like Soros who want to legalize all drugs.
It's like the "polls" that aaked if we should allow abortion for a 13 year old raped girl who might die unless she had an abortion. Who would say no? But the "reality" was to legalize all abortion. Same here.
A druggie society will degenerate because people won't fight for freedom. The brits did it to Ireland and their own poor with cheap alcohol, and the Americans did it to conquer the American Indians. Hmmm. maybe that's why Soros backs it: Drug up middle America, and he wins...
Medical marijuana gave my next door neighbor's wife relief during her cancer treatments. She passed away this summer. He's an 81 year old retired Sunday School teacher and doesn't understand why helping his wife would be controversial. I agree with him.
Hmm... The fast food companies would agree. Think of all the money to be made on selling munchies.
I think you forgot
Location poll was taken: 6th Street Austin
Time poll was taken: 2AM
Should be 100%
WE have all kinds of cocaine derivatives used for medicinal purposes and I have yet to find anybody refusing to use them when they have real bad apin
You are welcomed to come to Texas and make your pronouncement to all of us in person...like a man....or hide behind your PC...I note that you have no profile listed....at FR..
Now, be gone with your incrementalist, slippery-slope posts, the ultimate aim of which is to get marijuana legalized!
You are obviously so young and inexperienced or too stupid to understand or never witnessed the pain and nausea of cancer and it's treatments.....
BTW..Kiss my A__!
What facts do you have that this survey is bogus?
As simplistic as it may seem, I cannot look into the face of a dying cancer patient that also suffers from nausea and tell them...it is in their best interests that the State of Texas withhold effective treatment due to the misuse of the drug... If we used that logic, what drug would be available?
I am a strict supporter of efforts to stop illegal drug trafficing.
BTW...I am now leaving to visit such a patient at Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston.....
I see the Quack is back. Lady you have such a low esteem for others. You and L2L are so very elitist. You have a power of prescription by no magic other than to learn readily available information. What makes you think that only 0.001% of the population is capable of learning this magic?
I think individuals who are given the opportunity to think for themselves do so. But elitists who drum the theme that people are stupid help to maintian this environment of exclusivity.
I'd ask you to reconsider your perspective but I have come to know you - and your intransigence.
I wonder how many of those spewing forth hyperbole are speaking from direct experience, or simply having a knee-jerk emotional response much like a dem?
The Comical is lying with dubious statisics, again. A phone poll of 900 people does not equate with millions of Texans, which would constitute 70% of Texans. It wouldn't be too hard to target a demographic where you could get 75& of 900 people to agree with smoking pot - heck you could probably find that many slackers in Austin smoking it while taking the poll. :)
Because the cost of taking care of all you lazy dopers would outweigh any possible benefits?!
My point was that this is a bogus poll, like most polls.
BTW, I'm guessing that it would take less time to kiss the entire state of Texas than it would your grandious backside...
In other news, FReeper RockAgainsttheLeft04 has re-affirmed his support for 75% of all Texans...
Seriously, though. Medicinal or not, it's time for the U.S. government to just give up this charade of fighting a "war on drugs" and LEGALIZE IT ALREADY. Their ineffective, unjust prohibition against the good herb has cost taxpayers billions of dollars yearly that could have been better spent fighting the Islamist terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, promoting homeland security, or simply being left alone in the pockets of those who earned this dough to begin with.
Nicotine is far more addictive; alcohol is far more dangerous; and anybody who supports this beurocratic intrusion into the private lives of U.S. citizens needs to think twice before calling themselves a conservative...
It was you that made the decision to take personal shot at me (the poster) instead of formulating a factual response...or in your case a simplistic & likely regretable rebuttal. Now you dig your hole deeper & do it again, plus you proclaim that my "backside" would take longer to kiss that all of those in the entire State of Texas...
BTW, it's the Great State of Texas you moron!
Get an education...wipe your snotty nose....and update your Freeper profile so we all can have a laugh.....
Gee, sorry to note this, but your profile shows that you have apparantly been RIDING a pole for some length of time...I'll match my education against a telephone repairman's ANY day!
BTW, Texas is great in spite of you!
God said not to eat the apple, and in saying that planted the fruit of temptation. Temptation won and we left the garden. Now the fearful ones plant more seeds of temptation by vilifying one of God's Gifts.
Internet is great, isn't it? You can pretend to be anything you want. You're pretending to be a ejimakated brownshirt, how cool. Hmmm, are you really a brownshirt, or just trying to embarrass the WOD'ies? At least Mr Telephone Repairman has the eggs to say something about himself.
Now you've done it....you pushed the labor button....
I am proud of my roots and the climbing of 1000's of telephone poles to restore service in Texas... That was between 1970 & 1974... I retired with subordinates in 13 states from California to Connecticutt....and and United States Patent...plus an education that took me from Texas to Mass. I really don't understand your original attack on me and my fellow Texans.....PUNK!
Amen brother!
Hasn't this insanity gone on long enough? I for the life of me have never understood what kind of sick pleasure some people obviously derive by wanting to lock other people in steel cages because they enjoy a politically incorrect plant..
May I suggest you read 'Elmer Gantry', by Sinclair Lewis, published in 1927. It is most insightful into the intrusive psychology you're wondering about.
Thanks for the heads up, Ill definately check it out
BTW, I don't have to embarrass the WOD'ies; you embarass yourselves...
I suppose you are the type of parent who turns all the burners on the stove to "High" and tells your kids there's "yummy candy" on top of the stove...
Oh yeah, it's Friday night!
You're already stoned out of your gourds...
And I assume you're the type of parent who blows bubbles. So what?
Now...in the words of the immortal Rodney King, " Can't we all just get along?"
I give up.... I know when I have been licked..........all over!
Turn around, and crawl back into the bong where you won't do something hurtful like driving your car, or walking down the train tracks, or operating heavy machinery...
Note that in my postings, I never advocated abuse of drugs......I simply do not undertand your personal attack on me and the good citizens of Texas for simply posting an article... Being an adult Texan, I should never have responded to your original low-ball hack-attack....
PS You seem to know much about the terms of drug paraphernalia....much more than I... I do wonder about that.....
Gee whiz, I guess I'll just have to pack it in for the night, now that I've been found out as a closet doper...
By the way, your thinly veiled "I've never advocated ABUSE of drugs" is quite laughable...I suppose you posted this article to help your poor 98-year-old grandmother get the marijuana she needs to relieve the pain of her tennis elbow...
Actually....I witnessed my Mother's death. She was just 57 years old.....She died of cancer...in 1983. I was the oldest, but Dad raised 3 boys without her. I'd have done anything to ease her pain.
My Dad died of cancer in 2001.....I'd have done anything to ease his pain. I pray you never have to witness a cancer death.....
"I for the life of me have never understood what kind of sick pleasure some people obviously derive by wanting to lock other people in steel cages because they enjoy a politically incorrect plant.."
Yup. That's exactly what I was getting at with my original post. It's almost as if the WOD symps get some kind of a filthy kick out of locking pot users up. Their drug is the euphoria they get from knowing that they put someone away amongst the murderers and thieves of the U.S.A. just for smoking a mostly harmless plant.
Sometimes I wonder if these people don't want to bring Thai-style abuses to our justice system.
He's a freak! Ignore him.
You can shape a poll in advance to get any opinion you want.
That says it all!
Nope, Thai.
I was referring to the "anti-drug" campaign that Prime Minister Shiniwatra (probably didn't spell that right) undertook last year. More of a war against his own civilians (or Marshall Law), 2,300 people were killed by the police in just under 5 months, with many of the dead being executed on sight. Reports of himan rights abuses included children being killed in the crossfires, and the possibility that most of the dead weren't even IN the drug trade to begin with, and that many were killed for reasons completely unrelated to the sale and traffiking of illegal substances.
They must have polled Austin and the Montrose area of Houston.
Sorry, got my facts wrong.
That should read 2,252 dead in just over THREE Months!
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