With Canada on the path to a nationwide adult-use cannabis regime, recent polling data suggest that a comfortable majority of Canadians support pardoning individuals with cannabis possession convictions on their permanent records.
34 percent of Canadians would support such a move and 28 percent would somewhat support it; 23 percent would oppose this move, 12 percent would somewhat oppose it, and four percent were uncertain, the pollsters report.
The data was collected in a joint effort between The Globe and Mail and Nanos Research between April 29 and May 5 via a hybrid telephone and online random survey of 1,000 Canadians who were 18 years old or older. According to the report, “the margin of error for a random survey of 1,000 Canadians is ±3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.”
Also of note, a 55% majority of Canadians oppose giving law enforcement the right to demand a breath sample without reasonable suspicion. Meanwhile, a strong majority (73 percent) of Canadians say they do not currently use cannabis and will not start after legalization takes effect. Only eight percent of respondents said that they do not currently use it but plan to when it becomes legal.
In April, Canada‘s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled the federal government’s plan to implement legalization by July 2018.
Trudeau has said that cannabis legalization should be addressed as a civil rights and public safety issue — this contrasts the legalization plans of many U.S. lawmakers, who often attempt to gauge the cannabis industry for tax dollars.