Polling results re Utahns supporting legal medical cannabis have continued on their long-increasing positive arc over recent years – including this new poll done since the Utah Medical Cannabis Ballot Initiative was announced, and are now up to 78% including “strongly support” and “somewhat support,” while only 20% express any real degree of opposition.

We realize this doesn’t make passage “a lock,” as opponents will certainly pull out many stops in campaigning against the measure (on both factual and fanciful grounds in our experience), but as the article points out, the recent support of a few prominent Utahns like John Huntsman Sr. may also help.

The poll results come shortly after four-time cancer survivor Jon Huntsman Sr. publicly announced he would “love to” try medical marijuana. Huntsman has polymyalgia rheumatica, which causes severe pain in the shoulder and hip joints, and he said opioids do nothing to combat his pain.

The article also focuses on the positive experiences of Amanda Ellis-Graham, a TRUCE volunteer suffering from MS for the last 19 years.

The poll, conducted by Dan Jones & Associates, found more than three-fourths of both men and women support the initiative. About 65 percent of Republicans back the measure, the poll found, compared to about 97 percent of Democrats who favor it.

Rep. Brad Daw, the most often quoted of Utah’s whole plant opponents in the Legislature, and who is pursuing his own agenda said, “The fact that they want the initiative doesn’t surprise me,” Daw said. “However, I think once they understand what’s in the initiative, they will pull back.”

We do agree with Rep. Daw on one point: We’d like to see all registered voters actually read and study the initiative. Summary: http://ift.tt/2tpJJL9 Full Text: http://ift.tt/2hgllXQ But we disagree that the reading will lead to any mass “pulling back.”

If anything, our feedback – and we’ve been out in the community as well as here, on our website (https://truceutah.org/) and elsewhere on the internet, plus we follow media forums – indicates that while as supportive as the poll indicates, if anything many Utahns wish the Initiative had been more inclusive of greater availability of more forms of medicine and covering more conditions.

As you read it, we believe its careful seed to sale tracking and many other cautious approaches will in the end allay the factually exaggerated concerns some are raising.

#MMJ #Poll #Initiative #UtahNext #TRUCE

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See full article – Over 75 percent of Utahns support medical marijuana ballot initiative, a new poll says