I'm not sure that the majority opinion is that it is on tier with mp3 piracy.
In cooler towns like London, Manchester, Bristol, Sheffield maybe. But my parents in the midlands are strictly anti-drugs and see cannabis as as bad as cocaine, and its the case like that for all their friends and the community around.
The culture in the UK is just too different than the culture in the US.
I think there's a lot of geographical variation, I live in an area that would traditionally be considered very Tory-ish but it seems fairly common judging by the smell in public places. I have to admit my experience is probably biased by my social circle, but polling does suggest that staunch prohibitionists aren't nearly as common as our political climate would suggest.
This YouGov survey in 2019 has twice as many people supporting than opposing legalisation for example:
It's more granular than that. There are localities where the prevalent opinion is anti-cannabis, and localities where the opposite is true. I am in the state of Tennessee, and I have a family member who believes that a person who buys and consumes cannabis is "subsidizing murder".
Interestingly, Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent (v1) is currently working on a cryptocurrency called Chia that is trying to solve all of these problems.
Obviously exercise scepticism with all things cryptocurrency, but I'm pretty optimistic about it.
In cooler towns like London, Manchester, Bristol, Sheffield maybe. But my parents in the midlands are strictly anti-drugs and see cannabis as as bad as cocaine, and its the case like that for all their friends and the community around.
The culture in the UK is just too different than the culture in the US.