As signatures continue to be gathered on a pair of initiative petitions to legalize medical marijuana in Nebraska, a survey conducted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln estimates 83% of Nebraskans supported the idea in both 2020 and 2021.
The results of the Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey, published May 17 in the Journal of Drug Issues, align with internal polling conducted by Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana that shows 80% support for legalizing cannabis for medical use in the state.
Survey results also show support for legalizing recreational marijuana increasing from an estimated 40% in 2020 to 46% in 2021, according to the research team.
Patrick Habecker, an assistant research professor of sociology and co-author of the paper with psychology professor Rick Bevins, said the survey was created during the coronavirus pandemic, when researchers working together at the Rural Drug Addiction Research Center had to shift gears.
“During COVID, we had to suspend interviewing people who use drugs in Nebraska, so we saw this as a chance to continue the center’s mission,” Habecker said. “It’s a big issue in the state, even though Nebraska is one of the few states without medical or recreational marijuana.”
Nebraska first banned cannabis in 1927 when Rep. Thomas Axtell of North Platte introduced HR74, prohibiting the use or possession of what news outlets referred to as “hasheesh” or “mariguana.”
Congress enacted its own prohibition in 1937, but in the past several years, states have gradually begun to lift their bans on medical or recreational marijuana use, either legislatively or through citizen-led petitions.
A petition to legalize medical marijuana in Nebraska obtained the number of signatures needed to be put in front of voters in the 2020 general election, but was later struck from the ballot by the Nebraska Supreme Court, which ruled it violated the single-subject rule.
Two petitions, which would require the Legislature to enact laws protecting doctors and patients, as well as protecting private entities that supply and distribute cannabis, are now in circulation.
Habecker said the UNL research team sought to measure Nebraskans’ opinions about legalizing both recreational and medical marijuana, medical marijuana only, or keeping both illegal as part of the annual survey mailed to a randomly selected group of Nebraskans age 19 and older in each of the past two years.
In all, the survey was sent to 8,000 addresses in Nebraska spread evenly across the state’s six behavioral health regions, as well as Lincoln and Omaha.
More than a quarter of the surveys (27.7%) were returned. The average age of respondents was 51 years old, with a near split between men and women. The majority (90%) of respondents were white — higher than the 2019 estimate that 78.2% of Nebraskans are white.
The results show widespread and uniform support for legalizing medical marijuana only across all regions of the state, both major political parties, ages and genders, according to the results.
In only two of the eight geographic areas — the south-central (22%) and southwestern (25.9%) regions — did the support for keeping marijuana illegal in all forms reach 20%, Habecker said.
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“Recreational marijuana is where you start to see more differences pop up by region, as well as political party,” he said.
While 22.4% of Republicans said they favored keeping marijuana illegal, 45.2% said they would support legalizing medical marijuana, and 32.4% said they favored legalization of both recreational and medical marijuana.
That result comes despite the state's top Republicans, including Gov. Pete Ricketts, leading the campaign against legalization.
For the Democrats, just 9.9.% favored keeping marijuana prohibition in place, while 40.9% supported medical marijuana only and 49.2% said they supported full legalization, according to the results.
Respondents that identified as politically independent were more evenly split, with 45.9% indicating they supported legalizing medical marijuana only and 42.4% saying they favored legalizing recreational and medical marijuana.
Attitudes toward legalization change with age, with younger Nebraskans more likely to support full legalization than older residents. Less than a third of respondents age 69 and older said they supported recreational use.
Nebraskans who said they lived on a farm or in open country were also less likely to support recreational marijuana than those who live in a town or a city. Men were also more likely to support full legalization than women.
Habecker said the survey also attempted to capture how the stigma of marijuana affected the opinions of respondents, a question he said is “vastly understudied in political opinions.”
“How people view those who use a drug is an important element to consider, particularly when people do not have direct experience with a substance,” Habecker and Bevins wrote in the paper.
As participants report higher levels of stigma toward marijuana users, they are less likely to support either option, the study found, while the reverse was true for those with higher levels of stigma toward people that use cocaine, meth, opioids or heroin.
“Few studies of political support for legalization account for stigma in general, but we demonstrate that these measures are important to include, and operate differently depending upon the substance,” the paper concludes.
Habecker said one of the weaknesses of UNL’s survey was a lack of questions about whether or not respondents were likely to vote, or were regular voters, in order to gauge support for legalization at the ballot box.
Legislative efforts to lift the prohibition on medical marijuana failed in both 2019 and 2021, and a potential measure of the survey against the election results of the 2020 initiative failed when it was struck from the ballot, the researchers wrote.
“This leaves the stage set for a ballot initiative in 2022,” Habecker and Bevins wrote. “Despite our estimate of overwhelming public support for medical marijuana, the 2022 election will test how well public opinion translates to voting behavior in Nebraska.”