Fewer Pennsylvanians said they are in favor of full legalization of marijuana in 2023 than in previous years, Muhlenberg College’s 2023 Pennsylvania Health Poll shows.
Muhlenberg’s recent report shows the results of the college’s recent telephone survey of 417 adult Pennsylvanians. The survey honed in on issues like legalization of recreational marijuana, mental health, the opioid epidemic, health care quality and climate change.
The poll’s findings on recreational marijuana legalization could signal the reversal of a trend that had remained consistent throughout the 10 years that Muhlenberg has done its public health poll. While 50% of Pennsylvanians polled in 2023, the majority, said they support legalization, that is a smaller share than the 56% of respondents in 2022 and the 58% in 2021 who said they support full legalization.
At the same time, the percentage of respondents who said they opposed legal recreational marijuana increased, with 25% of respondents in 2022 stating they opposed it versus 31% in 2023. Ambivalence toward the issue remained the same as last year, with 18% saying they neither favored nor opposed it.
However, this puts Pennsylvanians somewhat out of step with the majority of Americans who still overwhelmingly saying they support the legalization of recreational marijuana. Polls cited by the advocacy group NORML show between 59% and 64% of Americans are in favor.
Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, said several things could be behind this apparent shift. He said this year’s result does still fall within the margin of error and the shift might simply be a statistical anomaly. He added this year’s sample of respondents may have been more anti-recreational marijuana than previous years, or it is possible that Muhlenberg may have caught the beginning of a trend shift.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if next year we see a rebound and this might have been an outlier,” Borick said. “But I also would not surprise me if after years of growth, there’s been such dramatic growth over this decade in support, that maybe we will see a natural leveling off or even slight drop in support.”
One new question Muhlenberg added to this year’s survey showed many people are concerned about recreational use of weed among young people. Fifty-five percent of respondents said they were very or somewhat concerned about the increase in marijuana use among people 18 to 22, whereas just 18% said they were not at all concerned.
Respondents happier with health care quality, concerned about opioid addiction
Another major shift in public opinion the polls shows is on health care quality. During the years that the COVID-19 pandemic was at its worst, far fewer people were likely to say health care quality in Pennsylvania was excellent — 14% in 2021 and 13% in 2022 — and more people were willing to describe it as poor, reaching a high of 16% in 2020. But public opinion appears to have rebounded to be more in line with pre-pandemic perceptions, with the recent survey showing 21% said health care in Pennsylvania is excellent and just 7% said it was poor.
“Public thought is moving out of the pandemic and into a new stage where pandemic-related impacts don’t dominate people’s appraisals of health care,” Borick said.
Drug deaths declined in the Lehigh Valley last year. Fentanyl remains the top killer
On the opioid epidemic, 62% of Pennsylvanians polled said opioid abuse was a major or moderate issue in their communities. The vast majority of those polled, 73%, also said not enough is being done within the state to address opioid addiction.
This view crossed party lines, with nearly equal percentages of Democrats and Republicans, 75% and 73% respectively, believing that not enough was being done to address opioid addiction. But independents were somewhat less likely to feel this way — 68% — and they were more likely to be on the fence than either Democrats or Republicans.
Mental health declines
Significantly fewer Pennsylvanians ranked their health as excellent compared to prior years — 25% in 2023 versus 35% in 2022 — while a greater share said their mental health was merely good — 53% in 2023 versus 44% in 2022. However, there was no noticeable change in the share of respondents who said their health was “only fair” or poor.
Factors like income, age and marital status seemed to correlate with mental health.
Those who made $80,000 per year or more were far more likely to describe their mental health as excellent than any other economic bracket. The majority of those who made $20,000 or less per year were the least likely to report excellent or good mental health; 19% reported their mental health as poor.
Just as Pennsylvanians with a healthy paycheck were more likely to report better mental health, the same was true of those with a healthy relationship. Those who were married or in a long-term relationship were more likely to report excellent mental health and much less likely to report poor mental health than single people.
“Our findings concur with a lot of other evidence. People that are married or in longer term relationships report higher levels of happiness,” Borick said. “Money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness — we’re not claiming that at all — but you’re more likely to report very positive mental health conditions when you are in higher income categories. The stressors of living with lower income or in poverty are well documented.”
Borick said that the alarm has also been raised on the mental well-being of young people and the survey results reflect this. People 30 and older were more likely to rate their mental health as excellent or good compared to adults in their 20s and late teens and one in three young Pennsylvanians under 30 said their mental health was fair or poor.
There were a few other standouts on mental health.
Those who had completed a technical education or some college reported having excellent mental health more often than any other group, though those with graduate or professional degrees didn’t lag far behind. But respondents who had only graduated high school or hadn’t graduated at all were much less likely to report excellent mental health than any other group and much more likely to report poor mental health.
How concerned respondents were about climate change also appeared to be correlate with mental health. Of those who said climate change was a crisis, just 16% reported being in excellent mental health and 9% reported being in poor mental health than, whereas 37% of those who said it wasn’t a problem reported excellent mental health and hardly any reported poor mental health.
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