Efforts to convince New Mexicans to legalize recreational pot have been especially intense and well funded.  After losing the legislature and the governorship, Democratic interests have set their sights on this year's election candidates, hoping to turn the state reefer blue.

Local newspapers have been relentlessly reporting on polls claiming that most New Mexicans support the legalization of pot.  The most recent story (the third this year) on yet another survey conducted by Albuquerque-based Research & Polling, Inc. (RPI) headlined that nearly 2:1 New Mexicans back legalized marijuana.

New Mexicans are being hoodwinked.

These news stories are not reporting news.  They are marketing.  As every communications and marketing professional knows, polling is the primary marketing technique to shape public opinion.  Public relations and advertising firms use polls and surveys to create the "bandwagon effect" and take advantage of people's natural tendencies to get behind ideas that are seen as popular.  People instinctively feel more comfortable believing what they think everyone else thinks and being part of the "in" crowd.

In actuality, surveys and polls don't measure opinions.  They manipulate them.  Professional marketing firms know how to use polling to define an issue and benefit the organization hiring them.  It's incredibly easy for a pollster to design polls to create any consensus the firm wants to promote, simply by how questions are phrased, the restricted choices, who is polled, how the questions are asked, and how the results are interpreted and reported (and what isn't reported).

The RPI poll biases and weaknesses are numerous to anyone who looks.  The poll randomly called New Mexico-issued cell phones and phones with N.M. prefixes.  It stated that only 69% of the interviews were completed, for a total of 420 people surveyed (out of 1.24 million registered voters, per the latest New Mexico Voter Registration Statistics).  Low participation rates are a sign of a weak poll and lead to substantial bias, according to Pew Research.  A poll's low sample size also leads to large margins of error, validity issues, and lower confidence levels.  Pot-users are also more likely to be willing to participate in pot legalization survey and to support legalization, so, not surprisingly, more than half of participants in this poll admitted to having used pot, up 15% from the 2016 poll.

The most important way polls manipulate results is by how questions are worded and the respondents steered toward selected responses.  It's easy.  In this case, people were first told that medical marijuana has been legal in New Mexico since 2007.  They were later asked if they would support a bill to legalize pot if it would restrict sales to adults 21 and over, regulate it like alcohol, and generate tax revenue to be used for health care programs.  It even went on to ask how they would most like the money to be spent.  So, not surprisingly, money was among the main reasons people later gave for supporting legalized pot.

Even if we were to believe the RPI poll, the company kept quiet on findings that didn't support its goals.  Between the 2016 and latest 2018 polls, opposition to legalization had grown from 28% to 32%.  Concerns over illegal drugs and drug abuse had doubled.  In open-ended, non-coached questions asking participants what they considered the biggest issues facing New Mexico, illegal drugs and drug abuse were among the most cited.

Let's consider a more factual poll based on actual outcomes of marijuana legalization, asking people if they would support legalization of pot if they knew:

• No state has ever seen promised tax revenues.  Earlier this year, California collected less than 1% of licensing taxes from growers and only a quarter from dispensaries, as pot facilities evade taxes.  Pot generated $39 million less than projected during the first quarter of 2017.  Colorado's total marijuana tax revenue in 2014 was a mere 0.4% of its general fund revenue.  More importantly, across the country, legalization has been a net drain on state budgets.  In Colorado, tax revenue fails to cover even the societal costs of legalization, leaving taxpayers the burden of regulation, law enforcement, health, school problems, and other expenses.

• No state has been able to regulate pot or keep it from children, resulting in rising pot use among children and teens.  Colorado has ranked #1 in marijuana use among youth since legalization.  The highest underage use is in states with legalized pot.  Medical professionals are increasingly concerned about the threats to children's health, rising emergency room visits and hospitalizations, and growing pot-related suicides among teens.

• Illegal black-market sales of drugs and diversion skyrockets, as suppliers avoid higher prices from taxes and regulations.  Law enforcement is compromised.  Illegal drug sales increased 43% in Colorado between 2013 and 2016, and crime has risen eleven times faster than the national average.  More than 70% of pot sales in Oregon are on the black market.

• Drug-trafficking and drug-related violence, criminal activity, and homelessness increase, as Colorado's seen.

• Health problems rise, diverting funds from needed programs and straining limited health care resources.

• Teens engage in greater violence, delinquency, criminal activity, and participation in gangs, posing public safety risks, warned National Drug Control Policy.

• DUIs and fatalities rise.  Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area reported that marijuana-related traffic deaths in Colorado doubled between 2013 and 2016.

• Industrial accidents and on-the-job injuries rise, 55% and 85%, respectively, at considerable cost to employers.

No doubt, if the reality of marijuana legalization in Colorado and across the country were included in the polling questions, the results would be decidedly different.  See how easy it is to realize what pollsters are up to?

RPI has been conducting the same "scientific" marijuana surveys in New Mexico for years.  What's behind these polls?  The polls have been commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance, along with marijuana-producers and dispensaries.

The Drug Policy Alliance is the biggest pot lobby in the country and a project of George Soros, who funded it with $80 million between 1994 and 2014, with ongoing annual contributions of $4 to $5 million.  The Drug Policy Alliance and its PAC political lobbying arm, Drug Policy Action Fund, are both based in New York.  The Marijuana Policy Project is its legislative wing, the largest group working to change state laws, which actually drafts legislation in states across the country.  Forbes reported that Soros's foundation had spent as much as $200 million since 1994 in drug legalization efforts.  "It's no exaggeration to say that without Soros there would be no serious lobby against the drug war," said the Capital Research Center.

The movement to legalize pot is not coming from popular demand.  "A great deal of its funding and fraud has been perpetrated by George Soros and then promoted by celebrities," said John Walters, former director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.  "The truth is under attack, and it's an absolutely dangerous direction for this country to be going in."

Surprisingly few New Mexicans know about Soros.  He is one of the world's richest fund managers who made his billions manipulating currencies and bringing down nations' currencies and financial institutions.  Since establishing his Open Society Foundation in 1993, he has funded it with more than $32 billion and operates some 200 radical organizations focused in the U.S., including 180 media organizations.  Last year's investigative Millennium Report demonstrated how he has succeeded in corrupting the everyday issues discussed in our media and academia, all part of a disturbing comprehensive political agenda to radically transform America.  It's not the fiction of conspiracy theorists.  Soros is acknowledged as the greatest threat to free sovereign countries, Christian values, and individualism, which he openly opposes, favoring a New World Order where all nations are subordinated to a one-world government.

Soros's Drug Policy Alliance is especially active in New Mexico right now, as Democrats work to turn the governorship and legislature blue in the upcoming elections.

According to Openness Project, George Soros and his sons, Alexander and Jonathan, personally gave $27,000 to Democrat gubernatorial candidate Michelle Lujan-Grisham's 2018 primary campaign.  The Secretary of State's New Mexico Campaign Finance Information reveals that Drug Policy Alliance and Drug Policy Action Fund have spent about $250,000 in New Mexico the past few years for marijuana lobbying and, along with marijuana businesses, also contributed at least $35,000 so far this year to Grisham.

Will New Mexicans be smart enough to realize they're being duped by Soros-funded polls trying to convince them that everyone supports legalized pot?

Sandy Szwarc, BSN, R.N. is a researcher and writer on health and science issues for more than 30 years.