Ch-Ch-Ch-Chaaaanges …

Here’s your assignment: Go outside right now. Go to there and find three cops — any three should do. Then, light up a big fat joint and smoke it. Smoke it all. *

According to a new poll administered by the Pew Research Center — one that asked close to 8,000 police officers a bunch of questions about the world at large — two of those three cops aren’t going to really care what you do with your free time. Attitudes in the force toward the weed is shifting tremendously, it would seem.

Per the data, 68 percent of cops in the U.S. now feel weed should be legal for at least medicinal use, and 32 percent of the overall set is fine with recreational weed, too.

The public? They’re more forgiving. Close to 84 percent of Americans feel like weed should be legal somehow, with 49 percent of the entire population cool with it on a recreational level.

It’s tough to say whether or not this has anything to do with cops changing their attitudes toward the plant because of recent efforts to legalize, or if it’s just the old dudes finally retiring and allowing younger, more liberally advanced shields run the show. Because as it stands, officers younger than 35 are (unsurprisingly) more likely to approve of marijuana than the ones over 50.

So even after some of the doom and gloom clears about how a Trump regime will affect legal weed moving forward, it seems like those in charge aren’t wanting so much to enforce archaic pot laws anymore regardless. Jeff Sessions (quite possibly our next attorney general) himself has even said that if the American people want something one way, we just need to get Congress to change the law so that he doesn’t have to make the hard decisions of enforcing federal rules over states’ rights. 

“It’s not so much the attorney general’s job to decide what laws to enforce,” Sessions recently said in his confirmation hearing. “We should do our jobs and enforce laws effectively as we’re able. The U.S. Congress made the possession of marijuana in every state, and the distribution, an illegal act. If that’s something that’s not desired any longer, Congress should pass a law to change the rule.”

That isn't the best thing he could have possibly said for pro-pot activists, although it's not the worst, either. Silver lining and all of that. Looks like the country still has some work to do.

*Don’t actually go and smoke a joint in front of a cop, unless it’s on your property. Public consumption is still illegal for whatever reason. Abide.