DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart - the last remaining member of the Bush Administration working for the Obama Administration.

In a move preceded by its Governor Chris Gregoire and other governors like Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chafee and Vermont’s Peter Shumlin, 42 Washington State Legislators today petitioned the DEA’s Administrator Michele Leonhart to reschedule marijuana at the federal level to recognize medical use.

We write in support of the petition that Governor Chafee and Governor Gregoire recently submitted to initiate rulemaking proceedings for the reclassification of medical cannabis (also known as marijuana) from Schedule I to Schedule II of the CSA.

We are also concerned that qualifying patients with serious medical conditions who could benefit from medical use of cannabis do not have a safe and consistent source of their medicine that has been recommended by a licensed health care professional in our state. The divergence in state and federal law creates a situation Where there is no regulated and safe system to supply legitimate patients who may need medical cannabis. More to the point, it is clear that the long-standing classification of medical use of cannabis in the United States as an illegal Schedule I substance is fundamentally flawed and should be changed. The federal government could quickly solve the issue if it were to reclassify cannabis for medical use from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule II drug so that it can be prescribed, which we believe the petition provides substantiated peer-reviewed scientific evidence to support.

The solution lies ultimately with the federal government. We urge the DEA to initiate rulemaking proceedings to reclassify medical cannabis as a Schedule II drug so qualifying patients who follow state law may obtain the medication they need through the traditional and safe method of physician prescribing and pharmacy dispensing.

Reacting to the news, NORML’s Allen St. Pierre replied to an activist who’d asked if this was the first time a state legislature has initiated such a rescheduling petition.  ”While 36 states from 1980-1994 passed numerous toothless medical cannabis reforms (most of these bills took the form of the legislature and governor ’memorializing’ Congress and the Executive Branch to change cannabis’ scheduling to II or below),” St. Pierre noted, “I think you maybe right that a state legislature itself to date has not formally petitioned the feds for down scheduling.”

I got yer stare decisis right here, pal...

All marijuana law reformers recall the case Raich v. Gonzales.  This is the Supreme Court’s decision that invokes the Interstate Commerce Clause to support the federal power to ban medical use of marijuana, even if the states allow it.  Angel Raich argued that she was growing California marijuana with California seeds in California soil using California water, California sun, California shovels, pots, and implements, for a single Californian (herself) to use solely for medical (i.e. non-commercial) purposes.  There was no “interstate” and there was no “commerce”.

Sadly, the Supreme Court, with the concurrence of Justice Antonin Scalia, disagreed, arguing a precedent from Wickard v. Filburn, a 1940s case where a wheat farmer wished to grow a personal store of wheat over what was then a federal rationing program of wheat for the war.  In that case, and in Raich, the Supreme Court considered wheat and marijuana both to be fungible – that is, you can’t tell personal wheat or marijuana from commercial wheat or marijuana, and the mere possibility that the personal stash could hit the interstate market puts regulation of both in federal jurisdiction.

Unfortunately, the uber-conservative Justice Scalia is now being penned in by the precedent of his decision.  The Obama Administraion, as part of its health care package, included a mandate that requires people to buy health insurance, with fines as punishment for failure to comply.  This is anathema to conservatives, who feel (at least when it’s not marijuana) that the federal government has no right to dictate what people buy and sell.

Talking Points Memo reports that Raich may be the petard by which Justice Scalia has hoisted himself:

[Angel] Raich claimed that Congress could not regulate her cultivation of marijuana for personal use because she was ‘entirely separated from the market. The Court rejected that artificial limit on Congress’s commerce power, because “marijuana that is grown at home and possessed for personal use is never more than an instant from the interstate market,” (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment). The same principle applies here. Because of human susceptibility to disease and accident, we are all potentially never more than an instant from the ‘point of consumption’ of health care.

The Obama administration claims that the exercise of federal power in Raich is at least as legitimate as the insurance mandate, arguing that letting people remain uninsured undercuts regulation of interstate commerce by passing medical costs onto taxpayers. Georgetown legal scholar and outspoken Affordable Care Act opponent Randy Barnett, who represented the plaintiffs in Raich, fears Scalia may buy into this.

Others believe he’ll find a way to oppose the mandate. Their argument goes that Scalia’s decision in Raich was motivated by a partisan desire to “punch some pot smoking hippies in the face,” and that he won’t hesitate to take a different tack when it comes to the health care reform law.

Adam Serwer noted at the time that Scalia may well have an escape hatch: as Judge Henry Hudson noted in his ruling to strike down the mandate, Raich was about regulating “activity” (i.e. growing marijuana in one’s backyard) while the mandate is about regulating “inactivity” (i.e. not buying health insurance). Invoking this could help Scalia fend off charges of inconsistency.

Author and Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of Drug Policy Alliance, at 2009 Albuquerque Reform Conference.

Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann has penned an excellent op-ed appearing in today’s New York Times entitled “Reefer Madness”.

Perhaps not since the civil rights era has law enforcement played such an aggressive role in what is essentially a cultural and political struggle. But this time the federal government is playing the bully, riding roughshod over states’ rights, not to protect vulnerable individuals but to harm them.

At the federal level, there have been few voices of protest. Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill shy away from speaking out. Republicans mostly ignore the extent to which anti-marijuana zealotry threatens core conservative values like states rights, property rights and gun ownership.

Mr. Obama briefly showed a willingness to challenge the drug-war mind-set that permeates the federal drug-control establishment. He needs to show leadership and intervene now, to encourage and defend responsible state and local regulation of medical marijuana.

Dr. Nadelmann will be our guest on Tuesday’s edition of NORML SHOW LIVE, airing at 1pm, 4pm, and 10pm Pacific on The NORML Network.

Steven DeAngelo and Russ Belville comparing hats

As the federal government continues a renewed crackdown on medical marijuana distribution in America, some in the movement are beginning to point their fingers at others for bringing down the wrath of the feds.  Today’s case in point (and hat-tip to Cannabis Warrior’s Mickey Martin): Steven DeAngelo, the head of Harborside Health Center, which I believe is America’s largest medical marijuana dispensary.  In response to a report “Feds Target Leader of Marijuana Legalization Movement” in the Bay Citizen, DeAngelo points the finger at Oaksterdam Founder Richard Lee:

To some, the backlash against Oakland’s dispensaries seems like retribution for its lenient attitude towards marijuana dispensaries. Last year, the city backed off on a plan to permit four enormous pot farms only after Haag issued a stern warning. Lee’s Oaksterdam was also the headquarters the Prop. 19 campaign.

“I warned everybody from the City Council on down who was pushing for those four huge farms that there would be consequences,” said Steve DeAngelo, who runs Harborside. “And I warned people who were pushing Prop. 19 that losing elections would have consequences.”

“In large part what we’re seeing is the consequences of an overreach by our community,” DeAngelo said.

A completely non-profit operation selling medicine at $15/gram only to sick people for medical uses.

DeAngelo seems to be saying here that if only we’d stayed with the status quo, not tried to legalize for all with Prop 19 and not tried to industrialize medical production, the feds never would have initiated this crackdown.  DeAngelo must be smoking a new strain of pot called “Kettle Black”.

Are we to believe that the IRS  hit Harborside with a bill for $2.5 million back taxes for 2007 and 2008 because Richard Lee fought for full legalization, not because various square magazines like BusinessWeek were touting “The Latest Fiscal Buzz: Medical Marijuana” about Oakland’s dispensaries, “three of which grossed a total of $19 million last year, all cash”?  DeAngelo was then arguing for taxes on medical marijuana far above the rates for liquor, tobacco, and pharmacies as a way of enticing cash-strapped local governments to accept taxation of federally-prohibited commerce and move them to support further legalization through reliance on those revenues.   Certainly that didn’t arouse any federal ire, right?

A sick or disabled person inhales medication from a twelve-foot long delivery device in the "Prop 215 Area" of the first HIGH TIMES Medical Cannabis Cup, sponsored by Harborside and featuring an appearance by Steven DeAngelo.

If there are fingers to be pointed for arousing federal retaliation, some of them have to come back to Harborside.

• While DeAngelo was warning the City Council about four Oakland mega grows, Toke of the Town reported that Harborside was applying to be one of those mega grows.
• While DeAngelo was warning Prop 19′s filers that “elections have consequences”, he was profiled in the New York Times trying to turn his failed for-profit CannBe venture into “the McDonald’s of Marijuana”.
• While DeAngelo is condemning “overreach by our community” in 2010, Harborside is sponsoring the first HIGH TIMES Medical Cannabis Cup in San Francisco where twelve-foot vapor bags compete with baseball-bat-sized joints for informal title of ‘largest medical delivery method’.  DeAngelo is speaking at the “Cypress Hill Smokeout” concert alongside Tommy Chong and B Real of Cypress Hill as well.
• And this year, DeAngelo will star in a Discovery Channel reality series about Harborside called “Weed Wars” with a promo in Entertainment Weekly explaining “DeAngelo strives to provide patients with the highest-quality product and uses his business to promote the national regulation and taxation of cannabis.”

But it was Richard Lee dropping $1.5 million of his own money in a failed bid to keep healthy folks like me out of a jail cell that earned a federal crackdown generally and Harborside the attention of the IRS specifically?  Please.

A pole dancer at the THC Exposé, a medical marijuana event featuring numerous dispensary sponsors (not Harborside, though). But whatever you do, don't put legalization on the ballot! We wouldn't wan't the feds to think we're overreaching.

The medical marijuana vanguard had better understand, and quickly, that, as far as the feds are concerned, there aren’t ‘well-intentioned compassionate caregivers altruistically providing a professionally-run taxpaying non-profit service for the sickest, most disabled patients’ vs. ‘money-grubbing pot dealers using the guise of medicine to bank fortunes selling pot at $15/gram to mostly-healthy potheads who lied to a pot doc.’  To the feds, we’re ALL in the second category. Valerie Corral and WAMM are as much federal felons as Dr. Feelgood’s bud tent on Venice Beach.  To the feds, marijuana trafficking organizations working in the eight-figure-sales range with 80,000 customers such as Harborside are even bigger federal felons than Dr. Feelgood’s five-or-six-figure weed store.  Trying to make nice with law enforcement by calling out ‘those bad apples’ who are ruining it by attracting law enforcement attention is just aiding our opponents in their divide and conquer strategy.

Stephen DeAngelo explains "Flip the Switch" at the NORML Conference (photo by L.K.)

DeAngelo argued in his “Flip the Switch” speech at NORML Conference that his example of non-profit cannabis commerce at Harborside would be a ‘legalization’ that a skittish public would grow to accept.  He argued that while 70% support medical marijuana nationwide, only 40% support(ed) full legalization.  Therefore:

With a well regulated network of legitimate dispensaries already in existence; when the fears of our fellow citizens have been answered; when the hundreds of thousands have grown to tens of millions, and cannabis consumption has become part of the mainstream fabric of life, our fellow citizens will finally be open to the call for a scientific and rational cannabis policy that they have resisted for decades.

In the 21st Century, medical marijuana support has flatlined and support for legalization of marijuana has almost doubled.

Where DeAngelo sees “25-30% of Americans approve of the legalization of medical cannabis or decriminalization of non-medical cannabis, but are unwilling to extend that support to the full legalization,” I see more Americans believing medical marijuana is a ruse for the outright legalization they increasingly support.  In 2005, Gallup’s support for medical and legalization, respectively, was 78% and 36%, leaving us 42% of people who support medical marijuana, but support locking people up if they are “too healthy” for marijuana, too.  That figure was virtually unchanged from the 44% gap reported in 1999.  But by 2010, medical-only support had fallen to 70% and this year, legalization is now a majority position at 50% (vs. 46% opposed).  So now only 20% of Americans support locking up the healthy, but not the sick, for cannabis.  That skittish ‘lock up the healthy pot smokers’ swing voter pool DeAngelo is aiming for has shrunk by half in just six years.

Two medical professionals outdoors in a San Francisco parking lot counseling thousands of medicating patients on the uses of cannabis to promote wellness.

“Flip the Switch” argued that we continue the tenuous medical-only model, fighting to expand the conditions for which cannabis may be recommended, until there are tens of millions of medical marijuana patients.  DeAngelo’s (and Dennis Peron’s and others’) notion that we’ll end prohibition by declaring “All Use is Medical” (or “Wellness”) just hands to the prohibitionists a clear-cut endorsement of one of their prime talking points: that ‘medical’ really does deserve quote marks and really is a ‘camel’s nose under the tent’ and a ‘Trojan horse’. If we say a trip to the dispensary is a wellness visit to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression, then so is a trip to the pub, strip club, and race track. ‘Medical’ loses all meaning if it is so broadly defined as to mean ‘anything that makes me feel good’.

New Yorkers Rob Cantrell and Danny Danko inside the Oregon-patients-only medical cannabis café that patients in wheelchairs can't access.

That’s not to say marijuana use isn’t truly medical (it is) or doesn’t promote wellness (it does). It is to say it’s a lousy political strategy. The problem is that it makes the argument about whether I can put something good for me into my body with a state’s approval and a doctor’s recommendation. It doesn’t matter whether it is good for me; legal cigarettes and alcohol prove I have the right to put things that are bad for me into my body as well. To rest the argument on the fact that using cannabis can be medically good for us is to emphasize that not using it medically is bad for us.  It is to accept that the gov’t has a right to prevent us from doing things that are bad for us.

EVERY demographic has increased its support for marijuana legalization since 2005

Also, increasingly, the public is with us on legalization and beginning to believe medical marijuana arguments are insincere (even as they are beginning to understand the medical marijuana benefits are real).  South Dakota tried a medical initiative in 2006 and got 48%; in 2010 they got 36%.  Arizona barely got 50% vote for their medical initiative when they got 65% in 1996.  Oregon voters rejected a dispensary system as the state’s largest paper called ‘bullshit’ on the medical argument and pleaded with advocates to just honestly open the debate for legalization.

Cocaine and Reagan did more to derail legalization efforts than fighting for legalization ever did.

DeAngelo argued in “Flip the Switch” that “I have been in this movement almost four decades, and for most of that time, we made little to no progress—until we began to fight for the right to use cannabis medically.”  I disagree a bit – an open and honest non-medical campaign achieved decriminalization in eleven states in the 1970s and legalization support has risen from 1-in-8 to half of Americans – but he’s right to the extent that California’s Prop 215 was our ‘Battle of Midway‘ that substantially tilted the War on Drugs in our favor.  However, I believe that the public support for medical marijuana is built on a ‘lesser of two evils’.  Smoking pot is evil, the public believes, but allowing dying people to suffer is more evil.  It maintains the fiction that smoking pot for fun is evil.  Thus medical support falls from 78% to 70% as more Americans recognize that some people are smoking pot for fun by exploiting the concern for sick people.

Do we have to keep re-learning this lesson?

Continuing to fight only for medical marijuana is to fight for marijuana to be only medical.  Alcohol prohibition did not end because the ‘wets’ instituted a commercial system for medical alcohol (though that certainly existed) and insisted ‘all drinking is medical’.  It ended because the ‘wets’ insisted on their right to drink a beer and convinced Americans that the evils of Prohibition were worse than the evils of drunkenness.  We may never convince some people that smoking pot for fun is anything but evil, and we surely can’t do so when we implicitly agree with them.  We can convince them that it is less evil than caging people over it and turning Mexico into a bloodbath.  However, we can never convince them that getting a checkup from a doctor with a stethoscope at a rap show so you can twist up a blunt in the “Prop 215 area” is anything remotely ‘medical’.

This is as incongruous as signing Cypress Hill to play the next AMA convention.

Prop 19, rather than being an overreach, was instead a catalyst to the 50% Gallup poll for legalization we just received. Prop 19 forced the legalization debate out of the pot-pun headlines and onto “Meet the Press”.  As I always say, when we’re talking about it, we’re winning, and Prop 19 forced everybody to talk about it.  The problem is not an overreach by legalization advocates, it is an overreach by medical advocates desperately trying to cover their recreational cannabis distribution services (and let’s face it: in California, it is) with a fig leaf of medical justification.  The bigger problem is a voting public that dislikes being bamboozled more than it dislikes marijuana smoking.

Your Bill of Rights does not fully apply in the shaded states

Considering that Barack Obama doesn’t believe medical marijuana patients have Second Amendment rights, why should he think medical marijuana providers have any First Amendment rights?  NORML Board of Directors’ Bill Panzer and West Coast Cannabis’s publisher Ngaio Bealum are quoted extensively in this latest story of the federal government’s increased offensive against one third of the country that has approved medical marijuana.

(California Watch) Federal prosecutors are preparing to target newspapers, radio stations and other media outlets that advertise medical marijuana dispensaries in California, another escalation in the Obama administration’s newly invigorated war against the state’s pot industry.

U.S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy, whose district includes Imperial and San Diego counties, said marijuana advertising is the next area she’s “going to be moving onto as part of the enforcement efforts in Southern California.” Duffy said she could not speak for the three other U.S. attorneys covering the state but noted their efforts have been coordinated so far.

“I’m not just seeing print advertising,” Duffy said in an interview with California Watch and KQED. “I’m actually hearing radio and seeing TV advertising. It’s gone mainstream. Not only is it inappropriate – one has to wonder what kind of message we’re sending to our children – it’s against the law.”

Federal law prohibits people from placing ads for illegal drugs, including marijuana, in “any newspaper, magazine, handbill or other publication.” The law could conceivably extend to online ads; the U.S. Department of Justice recently extracted a $500 million settlement from Google for selling illegal ads linking to online Canadian pharmacies.

Duffy said her effort against TV, radio or print outlets would first include “going after these folks with … notification that they are in violation of federal law.” She noted that she also has the power to seize property or prosecute in civil and criminal court.

When the drug warriors imprisoned Marc Emery, they said, “there’s one less pot of money [for the legalization movement] to rely on.”  Duffy here is worried about the message sent to the children (the truth that it is medicine) and the mainstreaming of marijuana.  This has nothing to do with law enforcement officials worried about the public safety and everything to do with hamstringing efforts in medical marijuana states to gain full legalization by ballot initiative in 2012.

What they don’t understand is that there is massive public support for medical marijuana, not just in the 16 states and DC but nationwide.  There is also an emerging zeitgeist of a massive government out of control, unresponsive and out of touch with the people, serving the interests only of massive corporations to the detriment of the people’s needs.  There are more long-term unemployed and greater income disparity in America than since the Great Depression.  Against this backdrop, what politician wants to be seen as killing jobs, undermining emerging growth industries, placing government between doctors and patients, and running roughshod over basic American freedoms of the press and right to bear arms?

Apparently, President Barack Obama.

If Obama's mom tried to get medical marijuana for her cancer today, her son would imprison the co-op that provided it to her.

On Friday, October 7, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, along with the four US Attorneys from California, announced plans for a coordinated effort against operations in California that provide safe access to marijuana for those patients qualified to use it in accordance with state law.

These actions are incompatible with the Administration’s pledge to respect the decisions of voters and lawmakers in states that recognize the medical efficacy of marijuana. They will result in limiting patients’ regulated access to medicine and they will also cost California necessary jobs and needed tax revenue.

Legislating medical marijuana operations and prosecuting those who act in a manner that is inconsistent with California law and voters’ sentiment should be a responsibility left up to the individual states, not the federal government. It is time for this administration to fulfill the promises and assurances it gave to the medical marijuana community, not to reject them. Please contact the White House and urge President Obama to abandon the administration’s escalating war on cannabis consumers.

Read this article:

Tell The Obama Administration to Halt Its Attack on Medical Marijuana

(Hat tips to Drug Policy Alliance for the headline, which was their 2nd subhead, and California NORML for some of the list of grievances…)

"If you inhaled in New York City, today you might be Barry the Drug Criminal"

When originally asked as a candidate his stand on the issue of medical marijuana, President Obama had pledged not to be “using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue”.

Today, four US Attorneys from the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice announced plans to “outline actions targeting the sale, distribution and cultivation of marijuana.”  Sixteen dispensary owners in California have received letters giving them 45 days to shut down before the federal government shuts them down and seizes their assets

The Obama Administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has openly declared that the mere act of registering to use medical marijuana in accordance with state law is reason to suspend a citizen’s Second Amendment rights.

Additionally, President Obama has been using the resources of other federal departments to circumvent state laws on medical marijuana.

The Obama Administration’s Internal Revenue Service has ruled that medical marijuana dispensaries cannot deduct common business expenses, a move that cripples the ability of any business to remain viable.

The Obama Administration’s Department of Treasury has pressured banks to no longer hold accounts for medical marijuana businesses that are heavily regulated, taxed, and surveilled by the state of Colorado.

President Obama had pledged that “science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health”.

Yet the Obama Administration’s Drug Enforcement Administration has blocked legitimate requests from researchers to study marijuana’s medicinal effect.

The Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has rejected a Food and Drug Administration approved study of medical marijuana for treatment of post traumatic stress disorder.

President Obama has appointed the heads of all these departments.  In fact, he even appointed to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration Michele Leonhart, the acting administrator who had been appointed by President Bush.

It is by these measures that President Obama may be judged as more aggressively battling medical marijuana than the previous two administrations in the medical marijuana era.  However, there is one critical difference between President Obama’s War on Medical Marijuana compared to President Bush:  George W. Bush never bothered to ask us what we thought about it.

President Obama has asked the American People on nine separate occasions for suggestions on public policy.  In every instance, the subject of marijuana legalization and medical marijuana support have been the top concerns cited by Americans.

President Bush never openly mocked us on the issue.  Of course, if President Bush had bothered to address our medical marijuana questions, it couldn’t have been any more incoherent than President Obama’s recent response.

Full disclosure: I voted for, campaigned, fund-raised, phone-banked, and publicly spoke on behalf of the Obama Campaign in 2008 when I was still a progressive talk radio host on satellite radio.  It won’t happen again.  Some tell me we’re more likely to see legalization under a Democratic administration; I see two Republicans running for president espousing marijuana regulation.  I see arrest graphs showing greater rise in marijuana arrests under Clinton than any president but Nixon. At this point in my childless life, I must take Keith Stroup’s words to heart and “never again vote for any politician who would treat you like a criminal”.

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.

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I had hoped for a little more change.

Paul Armentano has already done a fantastic job addressing President Obama’s latest marijuana gaffe.  Please visit The NORML Blog to read his take on Obama’s inability to form a coherent answer to the question of legalizing marijuana for medical purposes.

I was so inspired that I decided to make a video compilation of Candidate Obama and President Obama’s “greatest hits” on the issue of marijuana legalization.  If you don’t like the graphic reality of what the war on a medicinal house plant is doing to average Americans in their homes, you may not want to watch.

Click here to view the embedded video.