Towards cannabis, and for the better, I suspect. At least from a treatment perspective.

It appears that the American public is feeling a bit less positive about marijuana and its use.

This comes from a recent Gallup poll on attitudes towards the drug. The first question had to do with marijuana’s overall effect on society — would respondents describe it as positive or negative?

As of July, negative responses outpaced positive, by a margin of 54% to 41%. That’s a significant reversal from just two years ago.

A second question concerned the effects of marijuana use on the individual user — do you see that as positive or negative? Once again, negative views outnumbered the positive, by a similar margin — 51% to 43%.

Yet in 2022, those who saw the drug’s impact on the user as largely positive were in the majority — by a whopping eight points.

That’s all changed now. Here’s a link to the poll results themselves.

Of course, this is just one poll, and results can and do shift. Also, Gallup takes pains to note that American adults still view marijuana as less harmful than tobacco and alcohol.

To which I would counter, that’s not saying much. Tobacco and alcohol together kill far more Americans than all other drugs of abuse combined.

As for what is causing the shift in attitudes, I imagine it’s the weight of experience. With pot shops on every corner in some areas, and pot users more numerous than ever before, we’re seeing the consequences of what one expert called America’s ‘remarkably naive’ approach to legalization.

We’ve been acting as if the drug itself is harmless, no real danger to anyone. In spite of a significant (and growing) body of research to the contrary.

No, pot isn’t as harmful to the user as a nightly bottle of booze or a pack-a-day cigarette habit. It can still do plenty of harm to a percentage of those who use it regularly, especially so-called “heavy” users.

So from my viewpoint, the idea that more Americans will exercise  a degree of caution when it comes to cannabis use — well, that’s a good thing. And overdue.