FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Drugs

Just Let People Grow Their Own Pot Already, Say Roughly Half of Canadians

Weed is increasingly no big deal for most Canadians, a new poll says.

Photo via Flickr user Heath Alseike

If you ask nearly half of Canadians, they'll tell you there's nothing wrong with growing weed on your lawn, in your backyard, outside your window—medical prescription be damned. That's essentially one of the findings of a Forum Research poll released today.

Forty-eight percent of Canadians say legalized marijuana should include growing your own, while 42 percent disagree. (Ten percent were either high or don't have opinions, I guess.) That's way up from 32 percent who supported home growing or a combination of home growing and corporate distribution in a similar Forum poll in December 2015. With a new Liberal government boasting big legalization plans, this finding could potentially tip the scales to favour one kind of model over another. For example, Washington State's legalization laws don't allow citizens to grow their own pot, whereas Colorado lets anyone of legal age to grow up to six plants. PM Justin Trudeau hasn't yet indicated where he stands on personal growing. The study also asked Canadians whether or not they were cool with a recent landmark court ruling that allowed licensed medical marijuana patients to grow their own weed. The case overruled laws passed under the previous Conservative government that required patients to buy from licensed growers. Fifty-six percent of all Canadians said they approved of the February ruling, while 35 percent weren't into it. "The support is pretty broad across the country, with very little regional variation," Forum president and founder Lorne Bozinoff said. "Little bit of an age skew, but even people 65 and over approve of this ruling." Young people are the most supportive age group (67 percent), up there with people who have toking experience (73 percent). The only group who disagreed with the courts were card-carrying Conservatives, 54 percent of which didn't like the idea of homegrown marijuana medicine, even with a prescription. Alberta and BC showed the most love with 64 and 65 percent support, respectively. What does this mean? Pot's clearly not a big deal to Canadians, says Bozinoff. "You're not going to shock anybody here," he says. "Canadians say 'so what?'" That might be why BC pot activist Dana Larsen had the audacity to pledge to mail out weed seeds to anyone in Canada who wants to plant them earlier this week. Though still technically illegal, Larsen says he's not worried about Canadian cops coming after him. I guess 48 percent of cops support home growing, too. Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.