How many times do we have to dominate these "Open for Questions / We the People" forums before somebody finally gets it?

For the ninth time, the Obama Administration uses internet technology to solicit questions from the people on public policy.

Once again, marijuana legalization dominates the process.

On the “We the People” petitions site of Whitehouse.gov, as of this writing, NORML’s “Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol” petition is #1 by a long shot.  It has garnered over 42,000 signatures.  It needed 5,000 signatures in 30 days to generate an official response from the administration, a figure it had topped in just over three hours.

The next most popular petition to “Abolish the TSA” has just over 23,ooo signatures.  The third petition, “Forgive Student Loan Debt” has 22,000 signatures.  The fourth, “The Case of Sholom Rubashkin”, has 21,000.

Marijuana law reform once again dominates the top ten issues as well.  Number six is “Allow Industrial Hemp” with 13,000; “Legalize, Regulate, and Tax Marijuana” is seventh with 12,000; “Stop Interfering with State Marijuana Legalization Efforts” is ninth with 11,000, and “End the War on Drugs” is tenth with 11,000.

Change.org Top Ten Ideas back in 2009

As President Obama began his term, he promised to be “Open for Questions”.  Under “Change.gov”, in December 2008, even before inauguration, Obama used the power of online networks to solicit input from the public to shape his public policy.  Consistently, marijuana law reform has dominated the discussions and we’ve been reporting it:

• Change.gov (Dec 2008) – “The #1 question, 2 of the top ten, 6 of the top twenty, and a dozen of the top fifty all have to do with marijuana and drug law reform.”
• Open for Questions (Jan 2009) - “in the “National Security” category, after 284,445 votes on 4,449 questions from 20,121 people, we find this [ending the drug war] question in the #1 slot”
• Citizen’s Briefing Book (Jan 2009) - “Guess which policy idea is #1 again, with “44,950 points””
• 

  Click to see the entire Top 100 questions from 2010

  Open for Questions II (Mar 2009) - “Obama addressed the pot issue head on, noting the huge number of questions about marijuana legalization and remarking with a chuckle, “I don’t know what that says about the online audience.””

• Citizens’ Briefing Book (May 2009) – “the No. 1 idea listed would have been the call to legalize marijuana (buried on p. 26 of the report).”
• Ideas for Change (Mar 2010) – “I’m not surprised that our idea won yet again in nationwide voting on important issues.”
• YouTube Ask Obama Forum (Jan 2011) – “Just like it has been every single time the Obama Administration has asked the people to submit their concerns online, marijuana legalization is dominating the forum”
• Twitter #AskObama Forum (Jul 2011) – “marijuana legalization in general made up 1-in-8 questions of the subjects asked.”

I think we're beginning to see a pattern here...

The traditional media does their best to dismiss these clear expressions of public sentiment.  The New York Times called our concerns “a fringe issue” like “UFOs or the Kennedy assassination”.  FOX News proclaimed Obama’s efforts at transparency “stymied by internet trolls”, echoing Wired Magazine’s appraisal that asking Obama to legalize was “the idiocy of trolls”.  Even the allegedly liberal Village Voice (creator of TokeOfTheTown.com) mocked the efforts of “YouTube Stoners”.

However, with recent polls showing majority support for marijuana legalization - especially among younger voters - and now a ninth online campaign dominated by drug reform issues, it becomes more difficult for all but the most obstinate to ignore the big green elephant in the room.  With a struggling economy and young adult unemployment at rates not seen since World War II, Mr. Obama ignores or laughs off this question at his electoral peril.  He needs all the young votes he can get.

One simple Executive Order is all it takes!

Dear President Obama,

Once again you have asked us about changing American policy and the direction this country should take.  Your “Ask Obama” forum sponsored by YouTube promises to take questions from the American people on the issues they find most important in terms of national policy.

When you did this in 2010 you heard from us loud and clear about marijuana law reform.  We asked about re-scheduling cannabis to allow medical marijuana to flourish, decriminalizing marijuana to end thousands of arrests, legalizing pot to raise tax revenue, ending prohibition to cripple Mexican drug traffickers, regulating cannabis to keep it out of kids’ hands, reforming drug laws to re-prioritize police resources, embracing industrial hemp as a truly green energy source, and using science, not politics, to dictate our drug policy.

And you flat-out ignored us, despite those questions dominating in both quantity and popularity.

When you did this in 2009 you got the same response from the public.  That time you didn’t ignore us; you just laughed at us.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We know you’re a busy man and there are many pressing issues facing this country.  So we took the time to review the Top 100 questions on the “Ask Obama” site just now and condense each one into a few words so you could get an idea what the country is voting on.

Understand that this is not the list that appears when one clicks on the site.  This list is compiled by choosing “All Questions” and then choosing “Sorted by popularity”.  When one first visits the site, one of seven random topics including Jobs & Economy, Foreign Policy & National Security, Health Care, Education, Immigration, Energy and Environment, and Other, is presented in “Sorted by what’s hot” order, so it isn’t as if a certain topic becomes popular and then gets more popular because more random visitors are exposed to it.

So here they are, out of 97,344 people who have submitted 77,551 questions and cast 826,973 votes, these are the Top 100 Questions (as of Tuesday, 10pm Pacific).  I’ve taken the liberty of color-coding questions about the Drug War in white, questions about you ignoring our questions about the Drug War in yellow, and questions that are not about the Drug War in red.

Wait, make that the Top 101 Questions, so I can have at least one red question… Click the graphics to read the full-sized version… 

After the submission of 2505 ideas and 209,950 votes, we’re happy to announce the 10 winners of the Ideas for Change in America competition.

The winning ideas illustrate that the issues important to people across the country are much broader than those few that consistently dominate debate in Washington. Because they challenge the status quo, these ideas will face resistance from many in power. This is why citizen-driven initiatives like Ideas for Change are so important; by connecting more than one hundred thousand people from all 50 states around ideas that do not always gain national attention, we’re taking an important step toward building a powerful movement for change on these issues. And we’ve only just begun.

Without further ado, here are the Top 10 Ideas for Change in America:

1. Legalize the Medicinal and Recreational Use of Marijuana by Spencer Pearson and Larry Talley. Spencer is a sophomore at the University of Missouri where he’s focusing his studies on the impact of drugs and drug policies on society, having been inspired by the positive impact of medical marijuana on the health a family member. Larry, a retired member of the US Navy from Flower Mound, TX with over 20 years of service, spent much of his military career working to eradicate drugs both domestically and in South America. But, after observing the futility of his efforts and the violence endemic to the black market drug trade, he became an active member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
2. Move to Amend: Constitutional Rights for People, Not for Corporations – Abolish Corporate Personhood by Move to Amend, a grassroots coalition in Madison, WI
3. Increase Federal Good Time Allowances by FedCURE of Plantation, FL
4. Send the Tobacco Treaty to the Senate for Ratification by LIVESTRONG, in Austin, TX
5. Create 1.5 Million American Jobs by Fixing Our Crumbling Schools by USAction of Washington, DC
6. No Farm No Food: Save the Land that Sustains Us by American Farmland Trust from Washington, DC
7. Good Food For All Kids: A Garden at Every School by Ethan Genauer
8. End Chimpanzee Experiments, Pass the Great Ape Protection Act by Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, in Washington, DC
9. Establish a U.S. Department of Peace-building by Ted Nunn
10. 25 Million+, It is Time to Care About Rare Disease by Catherine Calhoun from Saint Francisville, Louisiana

Now that the voting has concluded, the hard work of real change begins. We will be presenting these ideas to relevant members of the Obama Administration and Congress, and subsequently helping to initiate national campaigns behind each winning idea.

I’m not surprised that our idea won yet again in nationwide voting on important issues.  What I note is that six of the top ten ideas were presented by issue advocacy non-profits, three from Washington DC, while our issue was presented by a student and an a retired military man.  (Also, Larry Talley has been a guest recently on NORML SHOW LIVE.)

As the popularity of the marijuana issue in these [Change.gov & Change.org] polls indicates, there is a significant, vocal and identifiable minority of American society that wants to see an end to America’s archaic and overly punitive marijuana laws. Politicians, particularly progressive politicians, would be well-advised to acknowledge this interest group and respond accordingly.

Further, a majority of the American public is ready and willing to engage in a serious and objective political debate regarding the merits of legalizing the use of cannabis by adults, even if their elected officials are not. One only has to log on to the thousands of public comments, both for and against, marijuana legalization on the message board of Change.gov and Change.org to see that Americans are pining for, if nothing else, an honest review of our nation’s so-called war on drugs.

These results shouldn’t be surprising. According to a national poll commissioned by CNN and Time magazine, 80 percent of Americans support the physician-supervised use of cannabis, and some 3 out of 4 say that adults should be fined, but not jailed, for using pot recreationally.

In short, marijuana-law reform should no longer be viewed by legislators as a political liability. It isn’t. Instead, for the new administration and for 111th Congress, it is a political opportunity. The sooner our federally elected leaders recognize this fact, the sooner we, and they, can begin to undo the damage caused by America’s longest and costliest war, the so-called war on drugs.

Read the whole post, Marijuana Reform Is Part of the Progressive Agenda, So Why Are Obama’s Drug Cops Already Making Pot Raids? on AlterNet.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Legalize marijuana goes right to crack smoking murderers in the streets and comparisons of injecting heroin vs. drinking wine.  Alan, you’ve got the right position, but expressed it very poorly.

The proper answer to “Do you want to legalize all drugs?” is “I want to end using prison for drug rehab.”  Don’t let a prohibitionist take you from “legalize marijuana” to “legalize heroin”!  We may indeed support some form of decriminalization for all drugs, but when people hear “legalize” they think “as available as beer”, because it is the only legalized intoxicant they’re familiar with.  Keep the issues separate, perhaps with “Sean, pot and heroin are as different as wine and morphine.  I don’t see a problem with making pot as legal as wine, nor with making heroin as legal as morphine.”

When Hannity takes it back to “injecting heroin in your arm is a lot different than a glass of wine…”, that’s when you reply with “but smoking a joint is a lot like a glass of wine, and we learned with Al Capone that making wine illegal caused more problems than it solved.”

Naturally, since it is Hannity’s show, he’s going to end it with a swipe like “Alan has to go take another bong hit…”  Not much you can do there.  But what I do in public when I get the inevitable sarastic jab like that, I counterpunch with, “Wow, for a drunk, you don’t slur your words at all!”  Chances are the jerk drinks alcohol, because a) jerks drink alcohol and b) alcoholic jerks tend to really hate potheads.  If he defends with “I’m not drunk”, you counter with, “But you drink, right?  I support pot, and you make jokes that I’m high.  You support booze, so I figure you’re drunk.”

Third verse, same as the first:

Ending Marijuana Prohibition

 I suggest that we step back and take a non-biased “Science Based” approach to decide what should be done about the “Utter Failure” that we call the War on (some) Drugs.

The fact is that Marijuana is much less harmful to our bodies than other Legal Drugs such as Tobacco and Alcohol. And for the Government to recognize Marijuana as having Medicinal Properties AND as a Schedule I drug (Has NO medicinal Properties) is an obvious flaw in the system.

We must stop imprisoning responsible adult citizens choosing to use a drug that has been mis-labeled for over 70 years.

via Change.gov: Citizen’s Briefing Book: Top All-Time.

President Obama’s Change.gov website once again asked citizens for their input and once again we made marijuana legalization the #1 issue.

If a million stoners click on a website, does it make a sound?

It’s put up or shut up time.  The wisdom to be gained from these Change polls showing legalization to be a prime concern for many is not that our issue is more important than global warming, financial catastrophe, the Middle East, and so forth.  It is that prohibition is such an obvious failure and legalization such an obvious windfall that Americans can’t believe it is still an issue.  And the key to unlocking that wisdom is knowing you’re not alone in seeing the naked emperor, that what is obvious to you is obvious to others.

Name any other issue that the American people support by roughly 3-to-1 margins, but no politician dare support.  Yet Americans support medical marijuana by that margin.  Americans believe in fine-only punishments for social marijuana by that margin.  Americans support farming industrial hemp by that margin.  So why is marijuana illegal?  Why would politicians run from something so obviously popular?

Because 3-to-1 support doesn’t translate into 3-to-1 action.  In a perverse way, marijuana prohibition is too flawed for people to be active about.  25 million of us smoke annually, but only 872,000 had encounters with law enforcement.  In raw terms, that’s only 3.5% of annual cannabis consumers who encounter “The Man”.  Then you figure how many of the 3.5% are involved in larger amounts, more often, have bad luck, are stupid, are driving, or are real criminals, and your average pot smoker thinks he’s got what, a 1 in 10,000 chance of getting busted per year?  Plus everyone who wants to smoke pot can get some and everyone’s lived under prohibition for so long that paying $45 for three grams of a weed seems perfectly reasonable.  Then there are the dealers and growers who can accept a few people rotting in prison so long as they can continue a tax-free cash lifestyle.

So time to put up.  If you clicked on Change.gov or Change.org and you’re feeling unheard, put your money where your mouse is.  Donate some money to NORML and help us all be a bit louder.  Start a local chapter.  Organize for the marijuana march in May.  Visit your state representative.  Start an initiative if your city or state has them.

Except, of course, the one we care about.  The one voted to the top of Change.gov three times and the top of Change.org as well.

A search of “marijuana” at whitehouse.gov returns:

Search was unable to find any results for marijuana, you may have typed your word incorrectly, have entered an empty phrase or are being too specific.

Perhaps we have just entered an “empty phrase”, huh?  I tried “cannabis”, even “drugs”, same result.

We are not welcome.

This website presents the most inclusive administration ever.  Pages of vision and specific policy proposals on Civil Rights, Defense, Disabilities, Economy, Education, Energy & Environment, Ethics, Family, Fiscal, Foreign Policy, Health Care, Homeland Security, Immigration, Iraq, Poverty, Rural, Seniors & Social Security, Service, Taxes, Technology, Urban Policy, Veterans, and Women, and we don’t even get a bone thrown to us in Additional Issues.

The slightest bit of mention of our issue is found on the Civil Rights page:

Expand Use of Drug Courts: President Obama and Vice President Biden will give first-time, non-violent offenders a chance to serve their sentence, where appropriate, in the type of drug rehabilitation programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior.

“Changing bad behavior.”  You’re being “bad”.  ’Cause drugs ‘r’ bad, mmmkay?  OK, if it’s your first time, and we find it “appropriate”, we’ll call you an “addict” and sentence you to rehab.  Sure, you’ll still have a criminal conviction that would keep you from ever becoming president, but there must be some punishment for your “bad behavior”.  If you continue your “bad behavior” a second time and we catch you, then it’s off to prison for you!

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-01-19.mp3)

Today’s Stash celebrates the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, the end of the Bush Administration, and the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama.  Despite some misgivings over Change.gov and cabinet appointments, I am so excited to see the new day dawning in America.  Yes, there are dark clouds hovering over us and worse storms ahead, but I can’t help but see the silver lining – that we just can no longer afford to arrest and lock up taxpayers for their cannabis use anymore, and we can no longer overlook an untaxed ecofriendly fuel-producing billion dollar crop anymore.  As Obama has said, this wasn’t about him, it was about us.  As Change.gov and Change.org have shown, we are ready to talk about legalization of marijuana!

It’s as if enough people who think the war on drugs is stupid have realized that enough people think the war on drugs is stupid.  We’ve realized that it’s OK to ask “Why are we arresting potheads?” and “How come we don’t just sell and tax pot?” without everyone thinking we, too, are potheads and even if we are, realizing that nobody gives a damn if you are so long as you do your job, pay your taxes, and be civilized.  Enough people have either smoked it, do smoke it, or know someone who smokes it to know the government is peddling nothing but lies to prop up a failed bureaucracy.  People know that one slacker stoner, but they also know ten more who are just regular working folks who toke.  People also know alcoholics and know they’d rather hang out with the slacker stoner, given a choice, and figure if we can tolerate alcohol, we can tolerate weed.

My guest today is Tom Daubert from Montana Patients and Families United (check ‘em out at http://mtpfu.org*) who is here to warn Big Sky listeners and rally Montanans to contact their state legislator to protest Senate Bill 212, which would strip medical marijuana patient protections for life if convicted of new cannabis DUI standards so strict no patient could ever pass.  In short: choose your drivers license or your marijuana license.

Then my full reading (with music and everything!) of my Cannabis Civil Rights essay posted below, if I may indulge, and in doing so, thank George Rohrbacher for inspiring me…

*That URL always cracks me up because the show Meet the Press is often abbreviated “MTP” on progressive lefty blogs I inhabit.

EL PASO — South-West city Rep. Beto O’Rourke has been in the hot seat since he successfully lobbied the rest of City Council to approve a resolution that included an amendment that asked for an open and honest debate on the legalization of narcotics.

The resolution by the Border Relations Committee called for federal intervention to quell the crime wave in Juárez that claimed 1,600 lives in 2008. O’Rourke added the part of a debate on legalizing narcotics, the rest of council agreed with him but Mayor John Cook vetoed it.

After making national headlines, being on the losing end of the veto and taking on a congressman, O’Rourke discussed the interesting week-and-a-half he has had.

Q All city representatives said they received a lot of calls and e-mails on this issue. Can you share some of the feedback you received?

A Right off the bat most of my correspondence was split 50/50 pro and con. Later on, I got more 70 percent pro and 30 percent con. Someone at my Monday morning breakfast meeting said that when they first read the headline he wondered what I and the rest of City Council were doing. But that then, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that we were right. That all options needed to be on the table.

Q Is it your belief that El Paso would have lost federal and state funds if the veto had been reversed on Tuesday?

A The honest answer is I don’t know. And part of why I don’t know is because the congressman (U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas) and his office and the state House delegation offered no specifics or facts. In fact, what they did offer was speculative. It’s speculation. There is no specific threat, no specific dollar amount or no specific project that is in peril. 

via Rep. Beto O’Rourke: 70% now back drug legalization resolution – El Paso Times.

The American People are ready to talk about legalization.  Every call for issues to discuss through Change.gov and Change.org has seen marijuana law reform rise to the top of the list, over concerns with the economy, foreign policy, the environment, and war.  It is not because marijuana law reform is more important than those issues, it is because those issues are at least allowed to be talked about.  

Americans recognize the fundamental unfairness and unAmericanness of silencing any discussion on this issue.  Americans have recognized that not only has the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs failed to stop any American who wants to use drugs from doing so, but that it has wasted billions of dollars, ruined millions of lives, and created the unintended harmful consequences resulting in the erosion of our 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 10th, and 14th Amendment rights, America as the world’s largest prison state, and the creation of needless violence and despair.

In August I commented on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s revealing interview with CNN, where she called on the public to actively voice their support for marijuana law reform.

“We have important work to do outside the Congress in order for us to have success inside the Congress.” Pelosi said. “[W]e need peoples’ help to be in touch with their members of Congress to say why this (marijuana law reform) should be the case.”

Ask and you shall receive.

In the past few months the public has taken their message to the hallowed halls of Washington, DC in unprecedented numbers:

Over 700 individuals have posted comments to The Hill.com’s influential Congress Blog calling on lawmakers to amend federal marijuana policy;

In December, a question calling for the legalization of marijuana bested over 7,300 public policy issues to claim the top spot in Change.gov’s inaugural ‘Open for Questions’ poll;

In a follow up poll conducted by Change.gov this month, marijuana law reformed was the eighth-most popular question voted on by the public, out of a staggering 76,000 issues.

This week, the question “legalize the medicinal and recreational use of marijuana” finished first (by nearly 5,000 votes) in Change.org’s inaugural “Ideas for Change’ online poll.

And finally, in yet a third poll hosted by the Obama Transition Team, the public’s call for “ending marijuana prohibition” is — you guessed it — polling ahead of all other issues. (To participate in this latest poll, please visit: http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov and click on “popular ideas.”)

In short Madam Speaker, the people have done their part — just as you requested. The question now is: When are your colleagues and the incoming administration going to do their part to end the federal government’s war on marijuana consumers?