In your own echo chamber, that may be true, but I hope you understand, there's a large number of voters (myself included) who oppose legalization. They may not be as vocal about it online, but their votes count just as much as yours.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/14/americans-s...
https://news.gallup.com/poll/323582/support-legal-marijuana-...
That's not to say people who oppose the legislation's vote doesn't matter, but it's overturned by the majority that favor it.
By the numbers in the links you provided, those supporting legalization for medical use only (which I do) represent a significant portion (> 1/3) of those lumped into the broader "support legalization" category. At the same time, many people interpret that broader category as supporting legalization of recreational use, which nationwide, has just 59% support.
Also important to note that public support is much lower in some states, and as a federal republic, those individual states have (and should continue to have) the power to decide for the citizens who live there.
Additionally, that number will almost certainly be higher in coming years. The shift we have seen in recent decades seems very robust.
I would argue this is due to the American public realizing that many of the arguments in favor of prohibition were exaggerated or downright false.
Demanding brownies and joints for "medical use" is just straight up dishonest. You'll notice that drugs for legitimate medical use are not supplied in either way. (oh, it's time to eat a glaucoma prevention brownie...)
100% agree.
After seeing what has happened in Colorado (and many other states) and the entire country of Canada, I'm curious to learn why you oppose legalization?
I don't use it, and personally don't really care, but I see it like same-sex marriage - let people do what makes them happy and lets move onto actual important issues.
For starters, a 20% increase in violent crime and significant increases in hospitalizations[1] directly related to marijuana use are two concrete examples. There are many more less-direct negative effects (e.g., insurance rates increasing for everyone due to marijuana-related accidents/injury) that probably aren't immediately reflected in public data, but are still detrimental to society.
[1] https://cdpsdocs.state.co.us/ors/docs/reports/2018-SB13-283_...
[0] https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/explorer/state/nebr...
While this is an ostensibly neutral collection of data, it reads to me very favorably about effects of legalization. Surprisingly even vehicle fatalities decreased significantly over the measured time period.
"violent crime increased 20% from 2012 to 2017"
If you graph the data presented in table 46, the increasing trend – specifically in violent crime since 2012 – becomes very clear.
I'm also not seeing any significant increase in insurance rates after my state ended prohibition, and the traffic fatalities and collisions haven't been significantly impacted.
What explanation do you propose for why cannabis legalization would lead to an increase in violent crime?
Anecdotally, the people I know who use marijuana drive high regularly and don’t think that doing so is dangerous, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The votes of people in favor of the status quo always count more than the votes to change, by a factor of perhaps 3 (since they need to be only 26% in order to be the majority-of-the-majority). More, really, since they need to control only one of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency.