North Carolina Voters Overwhelmingly Support Cannabis Legalization

RALEIGH – A SurveyUSA poll found that nearly three-quarters of North Carolina adults support legalizing medical Cannabis, while a clear majority backs adult-use reform as well. The survey covered 900 registered voters with a credibility interval of ±4.2 percentage points.

Support for medical Cannabis registered at 74%, with only 15% opposed and 11% undecided. Adult-use Cannabis legalization drew backing from 63% of respondents, against 26% who said it should remain illegal.

The partisan breakdown is equally striking. Medical Cannabis earned support from 83% of Democrats, 65% of Republicans, and 75% of independents. On adult-use Cannabis reform, the alignment held: 73% of Democrats, 52% of Republicans, and 65% of independents said Cannabis should be legal for adults.

SurveyUSA President Ken Alper pointed to lived experience in other states as the driver of shifting sentiment. “They’re much more comfortable with [legalization] than they would have been 10 or 20 years ago,” Alper noted, adding that voters have come to see the stability of states that have already enacted reform as evidence that long-held concerns about legalization were overstated.

The only age group to register mixed results on adult-use reform was voters 65 and older, who split evenly at 42% for and 42% against. Even so, that demographic supported medical access. Across every other subgroup, support outpaced opposition by a clear margin.

The numbers build on a steady directional shift in North Carolina polling. SurveyUSA found 57% backing for adult-use Cannabis legalization in 2022, compared to 63% today. A September 2026 Elon University poll independently confirmed those trends, finding 75% support for medical Cannabis and 55% for recreational use.

Despite the sustained polling consensus, state legislators have not acted. The North Carolina Senate has passed medical Cannabis legislation on multiple occasions in recent years. The House has declined to bring any of those bills to a vote. Senate Bill 1072, introduced in May 2026, proposes constitutional amendments that would decriminalize personal possession and authorize medical use [subject to a voter referendum] but the bill has yet to gain traction in the full General Assembly.

Running parallel to the legislative standoff, Gov. Josh Stein’s North Carolina Advisory Council on Cannabis, established by executive order in June 2025, is finalizing comprehensive policy recommendations due by the end of 2026. The council’s interim report already called for implementing adult-use and medical Cannabis legalization simultaneously, not in stages. North Carolina remains among a shrinking minority of states with no legal Cannabis framework of any kind.

North Carolina is one of the largest unreformed Cannabis markets in the country, with a population exceeding 10 million and now documented supermajority support for medical Cannabis access. A governor-directed advisory council is formalizing the policy conversation, and 2027 is shaping up as the realistic window for substantive legislative action. For operators and investors tracking the Southeast, the real story here is structural. Public opinion has moved well past the point of debate. The last variable holding reform back is political will inside the General Assembly, and that calculation tends to shift when polling like this keeps accumulating.

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