Once again the president opened up the “Open for Questions” section of whitehouse.gov to elicit questions from the public about government policy in America.  Once again, marijuana legalization topped the list of questions voted on by the public.  According to Wired magazine, Americans like you who express their support for ending the most failed federal policy since Alcohol Prohibition are nothing but “trolls”, which are defined as “someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.”

The first big issue and concern is whether the site will be swarmed with useless questions. The internet is a great tool for harnessing the wisdom of crowds — and also the idiocy of trolls.

So far, the trolls are doing OK in at least one area: flooding the page with questions about legalizing pot — a marginally important debate at most times, and a totally trivial one at a time of global economic catastrophe. As of right now, there are 290 questions that have been submitted that include the word “marijuana.” By comparison, there are 90 that use the word “manufacturing” and three that contain the word “broadband.”

Since the “legalize pot” fans are flooding the site, and voting up each other’s questions, they are overwhelming the algorithms that determine which questions matter most to users. Click on the category “budget,” and all the top questions are about pot. I’m going to do my best to vote them down since, personally, I think what to do about manufacturing in this country is more important.

So talking about the legalization and taxation of a $35,000,000,000 underground industry is “irrelevant” and “off-topic”?  Talking about pot legalization, which two states are currently considering in their legislatures is a “marginally important debate”?  Legalization of marijuana for medical purposes has been enacted in thirteen states and garnered more votes in the most recent state than did Barack Obama, but somehow it’s “totally trivial”?  American appetite for marijuana is fueling 60% of the profits of bloodthirsty Mexican drug gangs on our southern border, but asking about a policy change to shift those profits to American farmers is a “useless question”?

How is it that “marijuana”, NORML’s topic, managed to get 290 questions submitted, yet “broadband”, Wired’s topic, only managed to get three?  Could it be that NORML, the highest-trafficked marijuana law reform website, combined with all the others (MPP, DPA, ASA, SSDP, LEAP, SAFER, High Times, MarijuanaNews, and so many others), just gets far more attention on the web that Wired Magazine?

Wired Magazine's web traffic vs. NORML and MPP

Nope, that’s not it – Alexa shows wired.com beating the pants off norml.org and mpp.org.  I think it is safe to assume that Wired readers, by and large, are more technologically savvy than the average NORMLizer out there, so really, there is no excuse for Wired not being able to “out-troll” NORML in cyberspace.  I guess it does make us call into question the old amotivation syndrome – but not for NORML readers; rather, the Wired readers who seem more interested surfing their broadband than lobbying for a bigger/better/faster version of it.

Another thing you might want to consider, Wired, is that a great deal of your audience does think marijuana legalization is important.  Support for legalization runs highest among the well-educated and the younger demographics, both of whom are your target audience.  If my anecdotal experience of fifteen years in information technology is typical, then I’d venture to say the internet wouldn’t even exist without cannabis consumers.

We “legalizers” understand there isn’t a piece of the Bill of Rights, save perhaps the 3rd Amendment, that isn’t infringed by the war on marijuana.  We understand that marijuana legalization is completely relevant to the following national concerns:

• Health Care – Americans can’t afford it.  Drug prices through the roof.  Pharmaceuticals killing people.  We want to legalize the safest, cheapest, most effective, most versatile medicine on the planet – marijuana.
• National Security – Our southern neighbor is in danger of becoming a failed state run by criminal gangs because we won’t legalize the safest illegal intoxicant in America – marijuana.
• Global Climate Change – We are enslaved to oil addiction and pumping too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  We want to legalize a crop that will pull CO₂ from the air and provide a domestic source of fuel – marijuana.
• The Economy – We spend billions of dollars on prohibition.  We let billions more in tax revenue go uncollected.  We forbid Americans from performing various cannabis-related jobs in a time of mass unemployment.  We spend million on imports of hemp that could be grown domestically.  We want to put Americans back to work, cut wasteful and ineffective government programs, raise new revenues, and create a whole new industry by legalizing marijuana.
• Veterans – Thousands of our troops will be coming home with traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder, which can be treated effectively with medical marijuana.  Perhaps we won’t have to fight more Middle Eastern wars to protect oil supplies if we had our own hemp biodiesel provided by legalizing marijuana.
• Green Jobs and Energy – Hello?!?
• Auto Industry – Many automakers now use hemp in the production of door panels and other pieces of the assembly, which they have to import at higher prices than if we had domestic hemp production through legalized marijuana.  Thousands of dollars of the cost of a new American car relates to the health care expenditures by the Big 3 Automakers, costs that would be lower if people could treat themselves with legalized marijuana.
• Education – States all across America are cutting education budgets – even to the point of not supplying paper or school lunches – while marijuana interdiction task forces spend hours in helicopters searching for marijuana plants outdoors, 98% of which turn out to be un-smokable ditchweed, because we haven’t legalized marijuana.
• Gay & Lesbian Issues – HIV/AIDS has devastated the gay & lesbian community but people in 37 states can be arrested and imprisoned if they try to treat their condition with one of the most effective medicines for controlling pain, nausea, and AIDS wasting syndrome, because we haven’t legalized marijuana.
• Crime & Law Enforcement – Police are put in dangerous situations when ordered to engage in violent no-knock raids on marijuana growers and users.  The public distrusts and fears police when their casual marijuana use brands them a “suspect” in the eyes of the law.  Countless crimes go unreported when marijuana consumers fear calling police will bring attention to their own marijuana “crimes”.  It goes without saying that we free up scarce law enforcement resources to go after real crime when we legalize marijuana.

You name it, I can tell you how legalizing marijuana will help.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Commentary, Legalization, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a trackback from your own site.