HOUSTON - Every month at the Spaghetti Warehouse in downtown Houston, a short walk away from Allen's Landing, Republicans get together for a meeting of the Pachyderm Club.
Candidates drop by to hand out push cards and introduce themselves to party activists. Speakers talk to the mostly older crowd of GOP loyalists; and a lively octogenarian named Ann Lee lectures anybody who'll listen that it's high time Texas legalize marijuana.
"Prohibition doesn't work," she tells a small group of men shooting the breeze at a lunch table. "Prohibition is not conservative."
Lee has been tilting this windmill for decades, ever since a workplace accident put her 28-year-old son in a wheelchair and she discovered medicinal marijuana might help relieve his chronic pain. Over the years, she's found more and more converts to her cause.
So she's taken great pleasure in a new poll indicating a growing number of Texans agree with her.
"Surprised is not the word for it," she said. "Pleased is really the better word for it."
Just four years ago, the Texas Lyceum Poll indicated two-thirds if Texans opposed legalizing marijuana. Now the same group's latest poll indicates the state is almost evenly split on the issue, with 50 percent opposing legalization and 46 percent favoring it. (The rest were either undecided or had no opinion.)
Among those who opposed legalization, 57 percent said they supported decriminalizing marijuana by lowering the penalties for possession of small amounts of the drug while another 39 percent opposed that idea.
A deeper dive into the numbers shows Democrats tend to support legalization by 54 percent to 42 percent margin while Republicans tend to oppose it with 61 percent against it and only 37 percent supporting it.
Opposition tends to rise among older Texans, the survey indicates. The only age group in which a majority supports legalization is among 18 to 29-year-olds, with 66 percent favoring the idea.
A committee in the Texas House of Representatives earlier this year approved legislation that would have legalized buying and selling marijuana in the Lone Star State, but the bill had no chance of passing the full House dominated by socially conservative lawmakers.
Political analysts looking at the new poll numbers cautioned that legalization supporters shouldn't get their hopes up. Although the overall population may be tilting toward legalization, older voters who tend to oppose the idea are more likely to go to the polls than younger Texans.
"We see that people who vote and show up in these primaries and general elections, they are decidedly much more conservative and against the legalization than their counterparts who are eligible to vote but for a variety of reasons never show up to vote," said Bob Stein, KHOU's political analyst.
For the link to the full Texas Lyceum Poll click here.
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