Marijuana is #1.

To follow up on yesterday’s post, change.gov (the website of President-Elect Obama’s transition team) has now closed the webpage “Open for Questions.”

NORML wishes to thank all of you who took the time to visit the website and demanded the incoming administration to reform America’s marijuana laws.

Your message got through loud and clear.

After receiving nearly 100,000 total votes on more than 10,000 separate public policy issues, the most widely voted on question for Obama is:

“Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?”

(Equally impressive, 16 of the top 50 overall questions posed to the new administration pertained to drug law reform. Now do we have your attention?)

According to the latest update on the Change.gov site, “Over the next few days, some of the most popular questions selected by the Change.gov community will be answered by the Transition team, and their responses will be posted here on the site.”

So does this mean that the Obama will post a response to the public’s outcry for tangible marijuana law reform? Or will the incoming administration choose to remain silent on the one progressive issue that the American public, but not their elected official, is ‘buzzing’ about?

Meanwhile, over at the website Change.org (which is not affiliated with the Obama administration), your votes (Nearly 2,500 of them as of this morning) have made the question, Should we legalize the medicinal and recreational use of marijuana? the top rated idea on the website!

According to the site, there will be a second round of voting (this first round ends on December 31, 2008) in January to determine which top 10 ideas are presented to the Obama administration on Inauguration Day.

Finally, over at the highly popular website Digg.com, over 2,500 visitors have added their support for making marijuana law reform a key platform of the incoming administration. You can join the discussion here.

It was just over a month ago when statewide marijuana law reform initiatives in Massachusetts and Michigan prevailed with more votes than America’s soon-to-be 44th President — once again reaffirming the widespread popular support for changing our nation’s antiquated and punitive pot laws. It wasn’t clear that either the national media or the incoming administration was listening then. Are they listening now?

The website of President-Elect Barack Obama, www.change.gov, has added a new feature that allows visitors to submit and vote on specific public policy questions. Not surprisingly, over 130 separate questions have already been added to the site demanding the incoming administration to reform America’s failed marijuana laws.

Of these, one of the most widely voted on questions for Obama is: “Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?”

So far, votes are running more than 2 to 1 in support of legalizing marijuana. Pete Guither over at drugwarrant (Thanks for the tip!) reports that the question ranks in the top 30 of all questions submitted to the Obama website.

If you haven’t done so already, considering logging on to the website at:

http://change.gov/page/content/openforquestions

Type “marijuana” in the search questions box and tell the incoming administration to enact sensible marijuana law reform, including: ending the federal raids on state-authorized medical marijuana patients, and taxing and regulating the personal use of marijuana by adults.

Please note: Change.gov is not affiliated with the website Change.org, which is also accepting votes whether the new administration should “legalize the medicinal and recreational use of marijuana.” (Be patient; page is slow to download.) As I noted yesterday on NORML’s blog, cannabis legalization is the is the top vote-getter of all criminal justice related questions on the site, which intends to present the top 10 ideas to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day.

As the old saying goes, “Things are starting to get very interesting…”