Date of Award

8-2001

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Political Science

First Advisor

John Clark, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Kevin Corder, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Alan Isaak, Ph.D.

Keywords

voting issues, medicinal marijuana laws

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

In recent years, a growing number of states have witnessed the passage of state initiatives that have authorized the medicinal use of marijuana. The medicinal marijuana movement has circumvented elected state legislatures by relying on an increasingly popular form of direct democracy - the direct initiative. This paper briefly examines the history and continuing legacy of illicit drugs and the initiative process in the context of the movement for medicinal marijuana. However, the primary focus of this study is to uncover the voter characteristics that influenced attitudes toward medicinal marijuana in the 1998 state elections. This paper uses Voter News Service surveys conducted in Nevada, Arizona, and Washington State.

Using bivariate analysis of key voter characteristics - age, race, sex, education, party identification, and ideology - this study finds that only party identification and ideology significantly predicted voting behavior with respect to medicinal marijuana. The last portion of this paper briefly considers the campaign effects that likely influenced electorate behavior independent of voter characteristics. This paper finds that the actions of one special-interest group in combination with political variables led to the adoption of medicinal marijuana initiatives.

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