Felson Jacob, Adamczyk Amy, Thomas Christopher
William Paterson University, USA.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA.
Soc Sci Res. 2019 Feb;78:12-27. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2018.12.011. Epub 2018 Dec 10.
Since the late 1990s public opinion about cannabis legalization has become drastically more liberal, and some states have begun to legalize cannabis for recreational use. Why have attitudes changed so much? Prior research has considered a few of the reasons for this change, but this is the first comprehensive and empirically-based study to consider the wide range of potential causes for how and why this happened. We use data from the General Social Survey, National Study of Drug Use and Health, and word searches from the New York Times. We find that attitudes largely liberalized via intracohort changes. Most Americans developed more liberal views, regardless of their race and ethnicity, gender, education, religious or political affiliation, or religious engagement. Changes in cannabis use have had minimal effects on attitudes, and legalization of cannabis has not prompted attitude change in neighboring states. As to root causes, evidence suggests that a decrease in religious affiliation, a decline in punitiveness, and a shift in media framing all contributed to changing attitudes.
自20世纪90年代末以来，公众对大麻合法化的看法变得更加自由，一些州已开始将娱乐用大麻合法化。为什么态度会发生如此大的变化？先前的研究考虑了这种变化的一些原因，但这是第一项全面且基于实证的研究，探讨了这一情况发生的方式和原因的广泛潜在因素。我们使用了综合社会调查、全国药物使用和健康调查的数据，以及《纽约时报》的词汇搜索结果。我们发现，态度在很大程度上通过同群组变化而变得更加自由。大多数美国人，无论其种族、民族、性别、教育程度、宗教或政治派别，或宗教参与度如何，都形成了更自由的观点。大麻使用的变化对态度的影响微乎其微，大麻合法化也未促使周边州的态度发生改变。至于根本原因，有证据表明宗教归属的减少、惩罚性的下降以及媒体框架的转变都促成了态度的改变。
