President Obama’s YouTube Forum just concluded.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Our question on legalization of marijuana was removed as “inappropriate” after over 4,000 votes made it one of the most popular videos.

LEAP’s question on legalization of marijuana became the most popular video question after over 4,500 votes.

President Obama and YouTube spent 1 hour 49 minutes responding to the people and completely ignored the question of marijuana legalization that made up 105 of the top 160 questions submitted.

There was enough time for the President to meet the three kids off-camera of one mother, exhorting them to stay in school.  Statistically speaking, one out of three of them* will be arrested for a non-traffic offense by age 23, and three out of four people busted for pot are under age 30.  There was also time to attempt to cajole the president to dance and his explanation of being a lousy dancer and a sometime singer.

Nothing to see here, move along.  Just a bunch of potheads in the online audience, I suppose.

Click here to view the embedded video.

*Or maybe not… they are white middle class kids.

UPDATE:  As of 7pm Pacific, I checked the YouTube.com/WhiteHouse page to see how many votes our question received.  The good news?  Our question, “With over 850,000 Americans arrested in 2010, for marijuana charges alone, and tens of billions of tax dollars being spent locking up non-violent marijuana users, isn’t it time we regulate and tax marijuana?” received 4,023 votes, making it one of the most popular submissions to the forum.

The bad news?  See for yourself:

“The submission has been removed because people believe it is inappropriate.”  Hmm, well, who are these people?  The question got 241 “thumbs down” votes from viewers, was that it?  I notice that of the 615 questions submitted that asked about “With over 850,000 Americans arrested in 2010″ in the text, some still remain with 28 “thumbs down” and others are removed with as few as three, so it doesn’t seem like “people” refers to viewers or the public, does it?

Who are these people, President Obama?  They’re not the people out here who keep making marijuana legalization the number one topic of these online forums.  They’re not the millions whose lives are impacted by a marijuana arrest; the tokers and their families who lose jobs, houses, kids, freedom, assets, respect, security, and peace of mind because of marijuana prohibition.

Sadly, I think these people are actually just one person… a guy who smoked weed (and snorted coke) back in the day as a teenager in Hawaii and was damn lucky he didn’t get caught or today he’d be Barry the Drug Criminal.

In 2010, these were the Top 100 questions for President Obama, and they ALL dealt with marijuana legalization

(YouTube.com/WhiteHouse) On Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 9:00 p.m. ET, President Obama will speak to the nation in his annual State of the Union address.Starting today, you can ask President Obama the questions that are on your mind about the direction of the country and vote on others that you think should be asked. He’ll answer several of your top-voted questions during a special interview, which will take place on January 30, live from the White House. A selection of people who submit questions will also be invited to join a Google+ Hangout live with the President during the interview.

The deadline to submit is January 28 at midnight ET so submit your question now.

Here we go again.  How many times will President Obama ask the American people for their questions on national policy, how many times will we resoundingly call for marijuana legalization, and how will he diminish, mock, or ignore our concerns this time?

1. We petitioned him to legalize marijuana in September 2011, the number one petition;
2. We Twittered him to legalize marijuana in July 2011, making up one out of eight questions asked;
3. We asked him via YouTube video in January 2011, with LEAP’s question the number one video;
4. We asked him via Ideas for Change in March 2010, with legalization again the number one question;
5. We lobbied him via Citizen’s Briefing Book in May 2009, with the number one idea being legalization;
6. We asked him via Open for Questions II in March 2009, where he mocked the number one idea of legalization helping the economy;
7. We asked him via Open for Questions I in January 2009, where legalization topped most categories of questions;
8. We asked him via Change.gov in December 2008, where legalization was again number one and a dozen of the top fifty questions.

Maybe the ninth time is the charm?  Once again in this “ask the people” exercise the most popular questions deal with legalization of marijuana*.

Here’s the official National NORML question:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s my entry:

Click here to view the embedded video.

* Though this time, we may get beaten by SOPA, PIPA, and NDAA questions… which wouldn’t bother me a bit.  A free and open internet, threatened by SOPA and PIPA, is crucial to spreading the message of marijuana law reform.  NDAA is an abomination that allows the president to declare citizens “enemy combatants” and lock them up indefinitely without charge, without trial, and without rights.  We’re big fans of the First and Fourth Amendments here and these acts are counter to the spirit and Constitution of America.

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.

Marijuana was the biggest topic asked in an online Obama Town Hall. For the seventh time.

Remember in 2008 when President-Elect Obama was “Open for Questions” – an online request for policy suggestions from the American public? Remember when the #1 request (and 31 of the top 100) asked about legalization of marijuana? Mr. Obama’s team replied with a curt “President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana.”

Later at the beginning of 2009, Obama’s Administration opened up a “second round” of online policy requests and again, marijuana law reform placed in the top five, even with YouTube filtering out some of the “previously answered questions”.  This second time the question was completely ignored.

Next in 2009, the administration re-opened “Open for Questions” and for the third time, marijuana legalization was the number one request, framed as a way to help save our economy.  President Obama laughed at the request.

In the middle of 2009, the project was titled “Citizens’ Briefing Book” and the #1 request, outpacing #2 with almost a third more votes, was legalization of marijuana.  This fourth time the question was ignored and its popularity not even mentioned in the final report.

In 2010 the online requests were rebranded as “Ideas for Change” and, once again, for the fifth time, legalizing marijuana was the #1 question.  This was submitted to the administration and was never commented on.

Click to see the entire Top 100 questions from 2010

At the beginning of this year the forum was hosted by YouTube and called “Ask Obama” and not only was the top question about legalization of marijuana (asked by LEAP’s Mackenzie Allen), but the entire TOP 100 QUESTIONS had to do with legalization of marijuana or ending the drug war in general.  This sixth time, President Obama finally replied to the question without laughing, saying that legalization was ” a legitimate topic for debate”.

NORML's marijuana question got more re-tweets than the rest of the top five combined.

So this seventh time, the forum had moved to Twitter, using the hashtag (think: “subject”) #AskObama.  At NORML, we tweeted ”Would you consider legalizing marijuana to increase revenue and save tax dollars by freeing up crowded prisons, courtrooms?” and it was re-tweeted (think: “seconded”) 4,911 times.  The second-most re-tweeted question only got 1,800 re-tweets and marijuana legalization in general made up 1-in-8 questions of the subjects asked.

Naturally, Twitter didn’t bother to ask President Obama any questions about legalizing marijuana.  Roll Call reported “The whims of the stoner masses won’t take over as they have before — this time, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey will be moderating questions according to which he thinks are the most relevant.”

San Francisco Weekly picked up on the story and asked Twitter about the failure to ask the question:

It’s not quite so simple as that, Twitter spokeswoman Jodi Olson says. “Narrowing down 160,000-plus Tweets into just 17 questions is no easy task,” Olson wrote in an e-mail.

Retweets were just one indicator of an #AskObama question’s popularity. Mass Revelance, a social curation firm, sorted the horde of 140-character inquiries to find out which created the most buzz. Then a select group of Twitter users (called “curators”) further culled the list and found that the most popular questions “were jobs (23 percent); the budget (18 percent); taxes (18 percent); and education (11 percent), and you’ll note that the questions asked roughly corresponded to this,” Olson wrote.

I would not be surprised if the Obama Administration only agreed to the Twitter Town Hall on the condition that a marijuana legalization question not be asked, but I have no proof of this conjecture.

Regardless, the government and their media enablers are responding and have responded in the past that marijuana legalization is only popular online because of “trolls” who smoke weed and dominate online forums.  Even the allegedly liberal New York Times says it’s a “fringe issue” and the bohemian Village Voice has mocked the popularity of ending the war on marijuana as an issue.

It certainly couldn’t be that more than half of people under age 50 have tried marijuana or that there are 25 million of us adults who are consuming it this year.  It couldn’t be that just under one-third of the United States has legal medical marijuana and over one-fourth have decriminalized personal marijuana.  It couldn’t be that nationwide 46% of the people support legalization and among those under 35, Westerners, and liberals, it is a majority that supports legalization.  It couldn’t be that people are listening to every government policy study since 1894 that has recommended marijuana decriminalization or legalization.  It couldn’t be that people have realized that 850,000 arrests for marijuana are unnecessary and imprisoning people for home gardening is simply immoral and unjust.

Nope.  When taxes, budget, and jobs top the Twitter ranks, it is because Twitter has its finger on the pulse of American political concerns.  But if it is marijuana legalization, it is only because a small fringe stoner element is disproportionately represented online.  Considering the standard set by the drug war for ignoring the simplest explanations, defying the most basic logic, and burying contradictory science, Twitter’s silencing of the legalization scream is really no surprise.

Click to see the entire Top 100 questions

The President of the United States chuckled as the moderator told him that he had received a lot of questions on drug policy.  He conceded that it was the case last year also as he maintained his ear to ear grin.  I think the moderator actually might have been trying to steer the President’s answer towards marijuana by adding that since Prop. 19 last fall in California, it’s more on people’s minds now.  But former toker Barack didn’t bite.  You can watch the question from L.E.A.P. member Mackenzie Allen which gathered 13,842 votes in Russ Belville’s Stash post “President Obama’s Response To Legalization”.  The following text is President Obama’s answer.

[Russ adds: Footnotes to my snarky color commentary added below!]

Well, I think that this is an entirely legitimate topic for debate¹.  I am not in favor of legalization.  I am a strong believer that we need to think more about drugs as a public health problem².  When you think about other damaging activities in our society [like] smoking, drunk driving, making sure you’re wearing seat belts, typically we’ve made huge strides over the last twenty to thirty years by changing people’s attitudes³.  On drugs, we have been so focused on arrests and incarceration and interdiction that we don’t spend as much time thinking about how we can shrink demand.⁴ This is something that within the White House, we are looking at very carefully.

Moderator asks: Any Ideas?

Some of this requires shifting resources, being strategic as to where it makes sense for us to focus on where we need interdiction⁵.  We have to go after drug cartels that are not only selling drugs but are creating havoc, for example, along the US – Mexican border⁶.  But also, is there some way for us to shrink demand?  In some cities, for example, it might take you six months to get into a drug treatment program.  Well, if you’re trying to kick a habit and somebody says come back in six months, that’s pretty discouraging⁷.  So we’ve got to do more on figuring out how we get resources on that end of it and also look at what we are doing when we have non-violent, first-time drug offenders⁸.  Are there ways that we can make sure that we are steering them into the straight-and-narrow without automatically resorting to incarceration and drug courts and mechanisms like that⁹.  These are all issues that are worth exploring and worth a serious debate¹⁰.

1) So… legalization is at least in your vocabulary now?

2) Drugs maybe, but cannabis? How is it a “public health problem” when in 15 states, it is a public health solution?

3) OK, how many people did we arrest to change people’s attitudes on smoking cigarettes? We ticketed people for recklessly driving without seat belts and arrested people for irresponsibly drinking and driving, but did we ever break down their doors and shoot them and their pets over it?

4) Drugs maybe, but cannabis? Why do we presume the government has a duty to reduce demand for cannabis? As Stasher LivelyLibra opined: Wanna lower demand for marijuana? Cure my glaucoma.

5) Currently, that focus is $9.9 billion on law enforcement and interdiction and $5.6 billion on treatment.

6) Mexican criminals make money trafficking and selling drugs, with cannabis being a large part of that business. Perhaps Americans in need of jobs could compete with them and undercut their income.

7) Even more discouraging when you find out almost 288,000 of those beds were taken by cannabis consumers and 107,000 of them hadn’t smoked pot in a month before checking in.

8) If they are non-violent, what is the problem? The question is not whether we should legalize cannabis, the question is why the hell is cannabis prohibited in the first place?

9) Where’s that line in Article II of the Constitution where the president steers onto the “straight-and-narrow”? However, it is nice to hear “drug courts” lumped in with “incarceration”, since being sentenced to rehab you don’t need is a form of incarceration.

10) Then can we start by acknowledging that legalization of cannabis and legalization of drugs are two different debates? Addressing a question on legalization of drugs is like a question on foreign policy… depends on what you’re talking about. If it’s European policy it’s a different answer and different set of constraints and requirements than if it’s Middle Eastern policy. Likewise, legalizing cannabis, mushrooms, or Ecstasy is a different discussion than methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin.

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Hemp Headlines

1. Iowa Representative lies to get medical marijuana in California to prove why they shouldn’t have it in Iowa
2. British Columbia suspending grow-op inspections and fines after many non-cannabis growers are caught
3. Mexican officials catch drug traffickers with weed-bale-launching catapult to breach border fence

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• Groovin’ Thursday: Ultimate Rage & Sugga Dogg – “High Above It”

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Speaker’s Corner

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Radical Rant – Special Hour Two on Obama YouTube Question

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Legalization is a legitimate topic for debate?

Great!  Name the time and place.  We’ve been prepping for this debate for forty years.

Make it a televised two-hour debate with live online and call-in voting, a la American Idol.

The ratings would be historic and you (not we) will be surprised by the results of the vote.

But can we split it up into two separate one-hour debates?  Hour one: Cannabis legalization.  Hour two: Drug legalization.

$15.5 billion this year alone, 2/3rds for ineffective law enforcement.

President Obama responded to the most popular (or, the eighty most popular) question on YouTube.com’s “Ask Obama” forum regarding the debate on drug legalization in America.  Despite being the most popular question and gaining four times the support of any other non-drug war question, the YouTube moderator didn’t ask the question until #15.  The President’s response is a lot of platitudes about treatment, reducing demand, and reallocating resources, despite the Obama administration’s continued budget that puts twice the resources toward law enforcement than to treatment.  At its core, however, it retains the premise that responsible adult marijuana consumers must be persuaded by our government, through drug tests, drug courts, forced rehab, and incarceration, into not consuming cannabis.

Download audio file (Obama-responds-to-YouTube-Drug-War-Question-LoQ.mp3)

Mr. President, we’re never going to stop smoking marijuana.  Never.  American demand for cannabis is here to stay.  You can let criminals control that market or you can do the sensible thing and begin regulating it.

Click for full size version.

Village Voice columnist Miles Tanzer is among many in the media who have noticed that once again, questions about marijuana legalization dominated the online forum “Ask Obama”, where the president asks for suggestions from the people about public policy.  Unlike the mainstream media, Tanzer mocks this exercise in democracy and communications with the headline “YouTube Stoners Calling For Obama To Answer ‘Burning’ Questions”

YouTube is now taking submissions for its second annual “Ask Obama” online town hall meeting. Naturally, marijuana legalization advocates have spammed the YouTube channel with questions about their favorite pastime and the “world saving herb.” On Thursday, at 2:30 p.m., some of the top-voted questions will be brought to the president’s attention. This might be a boring interview considering that the top 300 most popular questions on the site are only about legalizing marijuana. We feel bad for the intern that has to sort through these.

…we’re pretty confident that the prospect of this legislation going anywhere, or even Obama taking any more of these questions, is about as likely as a stoner moving off the couch during an Aqua Teen Hunger Force marathon.

What do you mean, “naturally”?  ”Naturally” the people who are being arrested and lives ruined for using a substance safer than tobacco and alcohol are vocal about that?  ”Natually” Americans who love their country and civil liberties are vocal about saving them?  What is it about the cannabis community that “naturally” makes us more capable of allegedly manipulating an online forum?  Why is it that, say, Tea Party activists, NRA supporters, gay rights advocates, or the religious right can’t seem to dominate these forums like we can?

It would seem that we’re actually quite motivated and productive, huh?  And rather intelligent to be so efficient and capable online, right?

There are 25,000,000 of us, Miles, who will consume cannabis this year.  We tend to be better educated and have higher incomes than those who don’t.  Rather than reaching for tired stoner stereotypes and pot pun headlines, why don’t you apply Occam’s Razor and realize that ending the drug war is a major concern among a vast number of Americans, some of whom don’t even use cannabis?

How weird is it when Village Voice is the one mocking marijuana legalization, while we get this reporting from staid mainstream media outlets:

UPI:  Top Obama YouTube questions: Legalize pot – The top questions Americans want to ask U.S. President Barack Obama on YouTube Thursday deal with legalizing marijuana, a review of the questions indicated.

More than 193,000 people submitted nearly 140,000 questions and cast almost 1.4 million votes by midnight Wednesday, the submission deadline, a United Press International review indicated. This is 10 times last year’s 14,000 questions, the first year YouTube hosted an Obama interview.

The top 10 questions all involved ending or changing the government’s war on drugs, legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana and embracing industrial hemp as a “green” initiative to help farmers, the UPI review found.

The United States is hemp’s biggest importer. China is hemp’s leading producer. The U.S. government does not consistently distinguish between psychoactive marijuana and the non-psychoactive cannabis used in industrial hemp.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/01/27/Top-Obama-YouTube-questions-Legalize-pot/UPI-39231296118800/#ixzz1CGFoi7tb

USA Today:  Obama’s questions from YouTube deal mostly with legalizing pot – The YouTube generation is speaking, and many of them want to legalize marijuana.

A coalition of groups that support legalization of marijuana report that the top 100 questions deal with their issue, and says, “the American people want to know why our country is continuing the failed, catastrophic policy of drug prohibition.”

Politico: Obama is urged to talk about drugs – Drug policy groups are calling on President Obama to talk about legalizing marijuana after the top 100 questions posed to him for a YouTube “interview” turned out to be about the topic.

Obama will answer questions Thursday afternoon from people who sent submissions to a YouTube channel billed as a chance for the president to discuss issues more in-depth after his State of the Union speech. Obama didn’t mention drug policy in his speech.

“Several of the most popular questions also address why our elected leaders have virtually ignored these important issues,” read a statement by the Drug Policy Alliance, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, the Marijuana Policy Project, NORML and Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

“The American people want to know why our country is continuing the failed, catastrophic policy of drug prohibition,” they said. “We are encouraged by the grassroots response bubbling up around this issue and urge President Obama to address this issue seriously and thoroughly.”

I do appreciate you noting we had the top 300 most popular questions.  My analysis on Tuesday night found us only owning the top 100.  As the poll closed last night, more questions from other categories managed to break into the top ranks so that we only hold now the top 80.  UPI only claims we have the top 10.  Regardless, who’s the stoner here?

Still, let’s consider the theory of spamming.  The top question got 13,842 votes and there were 193,076 people who answered.  That means about 7 in 100 people who logged on voted for the LEAP question.  The next most popular legalization question had 5,745 votes, or about 3 in 100 people.  If those seven people were spamming drug questions, why did four of them miss the next question?  Since there were many of the drug war questions that got 2,000 – 5,000 votes, it seems to me more than half of the people who liked the LEAP question weren’t “stoners”.

P.S. Miles, I hate Aqua Teen Hunger Force and I’ll bet you an ounce I spend less time on the couch watching TV than you do.

You can't say we're not motivated...

Some final stats for the YouTube.com/AskObama forum we’ve been covering…

193,060 people have submitted 139,679 questions and cast 1,380,616 votes.

The top question, submitted by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, garnered 13,842 votes – over 1% of all votes cast (people could vote for more than one question).

As a police officer, I saw how waging the war on drugs has cost a trillion dollars and thousands of lives but does nothing to reduce drug use. Should we discuss legalizing marijuana and other drugs, which would eliminate the violent criminal market?

Of the 193,060 people who voted more than 7% voted for the LEAP question.  That’s about one in fourteen people who took the time to Ask Obama.

The next most popular question (which is also about the Drug War) had 5,745 votes.  Numerous other Drug War questions had thousands of votes.  Here are the most popular questions’ stats for the categories besides “Other” (where Ask Obama staff have been placing any Drug War questions):

• Jobs & Economy: 3,575
• Foreign Policy & National Security: 3,152
• Health Care: 2,819
• Education: 3,671
• Immigration: 2,288
• Energy & Environment: 3,108

As I was composing this the final stats changed…

193,060 people have submitted 139,667 questions and cast 1,379,814 votes

…so it would appear they are pruning some questions and their votes, which means the LEAP question (assuming it isn’t pruned) will represent even larger stats than 1% of all votes and 7% of all voters.

Are you listening, President Obama?  We are – we’ll be covering your live responses to these questions on NORML SHOW LIVE at 11:30am Pacific tomorrow.