Religiosity Influences Legalization of Marijuana among Chaldean Americans

The purpose of this study was to evaluate Chaldean American perspectives towards legalization and moral acceptability of recreational and medicinal marijuana in the state of Michigan. An online survey was created and distributed through various social media groups, churches, and Chaldean organizations which resulted in a total of 637 respondents following the removal of respondents who did not meet criteria. The survey was open from March 20th, 2022 to April 20th, 2022. The independent variable was level of religiosity. The dependent variables were moral acceptability, opinion towards legalization of recreational and medicinal marijuana, and risk of cannabis use disorder. Logistic regression was used to estimate the strength of the association between the independent and dependent variables. Approximately 64% of the sample was female and 54.6% were between the ages of 21 to 29. Almost 80% of respondents reported high religiosity and 83.4% strongly or somewhat supported the legalization of medicinal marijuana. In addition, 85.8% felt medicinal marijuana was morally acceptable and 58.9% believed recreational marijuana was morally wrong. In the fully adjusted models, individuals who reported high religiosity (compared to low/moderate) were more likely to oppose legalization of recreational marijuana (OR = 2.80; 95% CI = 1.46, 5.39) and believed that marijuana was morally wrong (OR = 2.36; 95% CI = 1.16, 4.78). This trend was not observed with medicinal marijuana. These findings have important implications in better understanding a traditionally conservative ethnic minority group in their attitudes towards marijuana and how religion influences their perspectives. Additional studies are needed to examine any changes in opinion overtime as this is the first study of its kind.