“Pres. Obama, what is inappropriate about saving billions and not arresting nonviolent american citizens for marijuana? #WHChat @WhiteHouse”

– E. Altieri, Comm. Coordinator

As of 7pm Pacific, I checked the YouTube.com/WhiteHouse page to see how many votes our question received in President Obama’s latest YouTube Forum.  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.

“The situation has become untenable for our states and others. The solution lies with the federal government.”

Both Governors Lincoln Chafee and Christine Gregoire of Rhode Island and Washington respectively were, ironically, two state governors who chose to heed to the warnings issued by the federal government in a Department of Justice memo (known as the ‘Cole memo‘) and not move forward with otherwise popular medical cannabis law reforms in their states. 

However, no more! These two governors’ action today is a very important turning point in the history of cannabis law reform in America.

Contrastingly, the governors of Colorado, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico and the city council of D.C. all largely ignored the federal government and moved forward with their states’ respective medical cannabis programs.

NORML began the entire legal and political debate about ‘medical marijuana’ in 1972 when it launched a 24-year re-scheduling effort, that is still laboring on all these years.

Therefore to finally witness governors so frustrated with the absurdly mis-scheduled cannabis plant as being dangerous, addictive and possessing no medical utility (wrongly grouped with heroin and LSD) that they are reaching out to the president to fix this clear injustice and warping of science is a clear demonstration that the friction between the federal government’s recalcitrance on accepting medical cannabis (or for that matter ending Cannabis Prohibition in total) and state politicians who can no longer justify towing the fed’s ridiculous ban on physician-prescribed cannabis to sick, dying and sense-threatened medical patients is coming to a dramatic conclusion in a government showdown, one that may bode well for the larger Cannabis Prohibition reforms needed, festering just below the surface of the public’s mass acceptance of medical access to cannabis.

No.

All the organization was seeking was an acknowledgement that cannabis had been badly mis-scheduled as a dangerous and highly addictive drug with no accepted medical value. The organization argued in one of the longest (and strangest) legal cases in US history, NORML vs. DEA (1972-1994), that cannabis is a safe, non-toxic herbal medicine that should be within the ambit of choices for a physician to recommend to a sick, dying or sense-threatened medical patient.

In the late 1990s a coalition of cannabis reform groups refiled a petition to reschedule, which was rejected this past summer by the DEA (see below).

Please review and sign a new petition asking President Obama to once and for all listen to the many numerous DEA administrative law judges that have previously ruled in the reformers’ favor and all of the clear science published that cannabis is in fact a medicinal product of great worth, providing maximum safety with minimal unwanted side effects and at relatively little cost for the consumer.

“Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects. But marijuana is not such a substance. There is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality…Simply stated, researchers have been unable to give animals enough marijuana to induce death…In practical terms, marijuana cannot induce a lethal response as a result of drug-related toxicity…In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume…Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” – DEA administrative law judge, Francis Young, NORML vs. DEA (1988)

About 3,000 more signatures are needed by October 23 to meet the necessary threshold. I’ve been told that the White House may raise the threshold soon to qualify petitions for Presidential review from 5,000 to 25,000. Undeterred-in-the-slightest, I’m totally confident that the NORML community will generate in excess of 25,000 signatures in support for this important and long-suffering cannabis re-scheduling for medical purposes.

Please sign the cannabis rescheduling petition here.

Medical Marijuana Advocates Sue Federal Government Over Rescheduling Delay
MONDAY, 23 MAY 2011 11:34

WASHINGTON–(ENEWSPF)–May 23 – A Coalition of advocacy groups and patients filed suit in the DC Circuit Court today to compel the Obama administration to answer a 9-year-old petition to reclassify medical marijuana. The Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC) has never received an answer to its 2002 petition, despite a formal recommendation in 2006 from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the final arbiter in the rescheduling process. As recently as July 2010, the DEA issued a 54-page “Position on Marijuana,” but failed to even mention the pending CRC petition. Plaintiffs in the case include the CRC, Americans for Safe Access (ASA), Patients Out of Time, as well as individually named patients, one of whom is listed on the CRC petition but died in 2005.

“The federal government’s strategy has been delay, delay, delay,” said Joe Elford, Chief Counsel of ASA and lead counsel on the writ. “It is far past time for the government to answer our rescheduling petition, but unfortunately we’ve been forced to go to court in order to get resolution.” The writ of mandamus filed today accuses the government of unreasonable delay in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. A previous cannabis (marijuana) rescheduling petition filed in 1972 went unanswered for 22 years before being denied.

The writ argues that cannabis is not a dangerous drug and that ample evidence of its therapeutic value exists based on scientific studies in the US and around the world. “Despite numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies establishing that marijuana is effective” in treating numerous medical conditions, the government “continues to deprive seriously ill persons of this needed, and often life-saving therapy by maintaining marijuana as a Schedule I substance.” The writ calls out the government for unlawfully failing to answer the petition despite an Inter-Agency Advisory issued by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006 and “almost five years after receiving a 41-page memorandum from HHS stating its scientific evaluation and recommendations.”

The two largest physician groups in the country — the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians — have both called on the federal government to review marijuana’s status as a Schedule I substance with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. The National Cancer Institute, a part of the National Institutes of Health, added cannabis to its website earlier this year as a Complementary Alternative Medicine (CAM) and recognized that, “Cannabis has been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years prior to its current status as an illegal substance.”

Medical marijuana has now been decriminalized in 16 states and the District of Columbia, and has an 80% approval rating among Americans according to several polls. In a 1988 ruling on a prior rescheduling petition, the DEA’s own Administrative Law Judge Francis Young recommended in favor of reclassification stating that, “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.”

A formal rejection of the CRC petition would enable the group to challenge in court the government’s assertion that marijuana has no medical value. “Adhering to outdated public policy that ignores science has created a war zone for doctors and their patients who are seeking use cannabis therapeutics,” said Steph Sherer, Executive Director of ASA and a plaintiff in the writ. Jon Gettman, who filed the rescheduling petition on behalf of the CRC added that, “The Obama Administration’s refusal to act on this petition is an irresponsible stalling tactic.”

A synthetic form of THC, the main chemical ingredient in the cannabis plant, is currently classified Schedule III for its use in a prescribed pill trademarked as Marinol®. The pill goes off-patent this year and companies vying to sell generic versions are petitioning the government to also reclassify the more economical, naturally-derived THC (from the plant) to Schedule III. The rescheduling process involves federal agencies such as the National Institute on Drug Abuse, HHS, and DEA. On average, it takes 6 months from HHS review to final action, whereas it’s been nearly 5 years since HHS issued its recommendation on the CRC petition, more than twice as long as any other rescheduling petition reviewed since 2002.

Further information:
CRC rescheduling petition
2006 HHS recommendation
2010 DEA Position on Marijuana

Writ filed today
Backgrounder on rescheduling

One of the reasons the walls of Cannabis Prohibition are coming down faster and faster these days is because of citizens like George from Oakford, who can no longer stand idly by and be witness to the waste and cruelty of incarcerating citizens for so-called marijuana-related ‘crimes’.

George’s signature is first, mine is second…will you please join us in asking President Obama to pardon Jason Spyres after he has served 10 years for a ‘crime’, that some day soon will no longer be a crime.

Thanks in advance for caring and sharing,

-Allen St. Pierre
Executive Director
NORML
Washington, D.C.

—— Forwarded Message
From: George A.
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:50:05 -0500
Subject: Need Help?

Hi: I am a NORML member and wanted to ask you to circulate a White House Petition that only needs 150 signatures(online) to become searchable (under marijuana or cannabis). It is:

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/pardon-jason-spyres-k99397-illinois-inmate-serving-30-year-now-9th-year-sentence-marijuana-charge/mxbD3tDp

I would appreciate your response or suggestions. It is in regard to an Illinois inmate who got locked up for 30 years, of which he has served about 10 years, for a first time marijuana offense. He was first locked up as a teenager. I worked as a Correctional Officer around this inmate and know that he does not deserve to be locked up for so long. I retired in 09 and can now help this young man fight for his deserved freedom. Please help if you can.

George A.
Oakford, IL

Last week the nation watched President Obama bestow a rarely presented Medal of Honor to former Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer. News reports indicate Mr. Meyer requested to have a beer the night before with his former commander-in-chief before the formal ceremonies.

The two men were in fact widely photographed enjoying a beer on the White House back porch.

Where did the beer the two men consume come from?

The same news reports reveal that our President has become the first ever home brew resident of the White House, brewing a “White House Honey Blonde Ale”.

Is it not painfully ironic to the point of disgust that the President of these United States of America–an occasional tobacco consumer and home brewer–along with the Speaker of the House John Boehner (a well-known tobacco and alcohol consumer), can responsibly engage in these adult-oriented activities, while at the same time providing ample public resources and rhetoric for continuing the nation’s farcical and long-suffering Cannabis Prohibition (74 years as of October 2nd!)?

Next time you hear one of these two elected policy makers spout off about being ‘anti-drug’ and not being in favor of cannabis law reforms…just remember that both men are just selective Prohibitionists…and hypocrites.

Really! Who wants to be governed by hypocrites who possess this ‘Good for Me, but not for Thee’ mentality?

Why does music from British rock legends "The Who" keep playing in my head when I see this ad?

Remember when we were told that “legalization isn’t in the president’s vocabulary?”

Remember when Mr. Obama laughed off a suggestion that marijuana legalization could help the economy?

Remember when he emphatically stated he would not pursue a strategy of decriminalization of marijuana?

Yeah, we do, too.

So imagine our surprise at NORML to find an ad for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign nestled in the prime ad spot on our YouTube channel: NORMLtv (http://youtube.com/natlnorml).

What’s the campaign strategy for the marijuana smoker vote, Mr. Obama?  Keeping at the head of the DEA one of Mr. Bush’s administrators?  Maintaining the Bush-era policy of raiding medical marijuana providers?  Escalating numbers of marijuana arrests on your watch?

Or will it just be, “Look, you think I’m bad, imagine what happens if (fill in GOP nominee) wins!  I just want to force pot smokers into costly rehab they don’t need on the threat of prison.  (Fill in GOP nominee) wants to (fill in terrible threat we’re already experiencing now)!”

You want the absolute guaranteed votes of 90% of the 25 million American adults who use cannabis annually in America?

Convince Congress to pass and then you sign Barney Frank and Ron Paul’s Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act.

It doesn’t cost you anything.  Marijuana is still illegal in all fifty states and 99% of all marijuana arrests take place at the state and local level.  It just means marijuana is no longer a federal issue; states are free to set up any marijuana regulations they choose.  The people in marijuana friendly states will support you more and the ones who hate pot still think you’re a secret Muslim agent from Kenya anyway.

Well, I take that back.  Your contributors from Big Pharma might not like you endorsing the competition.

UPDATE:  Apparently, based on comments below, I should’ve explained how GoogleAdSense works. NORML didn’t “accept” advertising from the Obama campaign.  We offer up a piece of screen real estate to GoogleAdsense.  They sell advertising packages to third parties, like the Obama campaign, which promise to place their ads on websites matching certain demographics and content keywords.  So we don’t even know who or what is going to appear up there as an ad (within limits; obviously there isn’t going to be a phone sex ad or Klan rally promotion going up there… we can limit certain types of ad content.)

It’s possible that the ad algorithm just saw “within 50,000 on Alexa”, “large youth demo of readers”, and “Congress / House / Senate / Obama”  on our website and automatically placed Obama’s ad there because he wants to reach young politically active people on popular websites.  In fact, I seem to recall some “Marijuana: The Anti-Drug” ads showing up on our BlogTalkRadio page in the early days of NORML SHOW LIVE.  I’ve seen ONDCP ads show up on other pro-marijuana sites.

We’re not a 20th century newspaper; it’s not as if Obama’s campaign team called and said, “Hey, NORML, how about we support you by advertising and you support us by accepting the ad.  The day the ad appeared on NORMLtv was the first time we saw it there and probably just as shocking to the president.

Steve gets it. The audience gets it. According to all polling, in excess of 90% of U.S. citizens broadly believe the ‘war on drugs’ is a failure (75% support medical access to cannabis. 73% support decriminalizing adult possession for cannabis; and 46% support cannabis legalization outright).

When will the two major political parties and presidents—like Obama—get it?

According to polling last week, President Obama is quickly falling out of favor with the Millennial generation that helped sweep him to power in 2008. Lest President Obama forget who brought him to the dance, he might want to look at the clear discontent—across all party lines—with the way the federal government has been conducting drug warring, notably its full-throat perpetuation of antiquated and tax-draining Cannabis Prohibition policies.

Instead, he should deliver a clear message for supporting a system of legally controlling cannabis, rather than deny economic reality, waste taxpayers’ money and constantly face embarrassing questions about a failed public policy that has long festered in the public’s mind.

President Obama should endorse a ‘drug peace’ where cannabis is legally controlled like alcohol products; patients can access a safe and non-toxic naturally occurring medicine; and farmers, entrepreneurs and consumers in America can benefit from industrial hemp production.

President Obama, NORML and tens of millions of cannabis consumers and lovers of liberty ask you not to re-commit us to war against ‘weed’, but, instead, to re-think the leaf.

By David Edwards of Raw Story

President Barack Obama said Friday that the U.S. would not be ending its war on drugs under his watch.

“Much is being asked of our generation,” a doctoral student named Steve told the president at a town hall event in Maryland. “So, when are our economic perspectives going to be addressed? For example, when is the war on drugs in society going to be abandoned and be replaced by a more sophisticated and cost effective program of rehabilitation such as the one in Portugal?”

“I have stated repeatedly — and it’s actually reflected in our most recent statement by our office of drug policy — that we need to have an approach that emphasizes prevention, treatment, a public health model for reducing drug use in our country,” Obama said. “We’ve got to put more resources into that. We can’t simply focus on interdiction because, frankly, no matter how good of a job we’re doing when it comes to an interdiction approach, if there is high demand in this country for drugs, we are going to continue to see not only drug use but also the violence associated with the drug trade.”

After several minutes of explaining U.S. efforts to help Mexico fight transnational drug dealers, the president got to the point.

“Just to make sure that I’m actually answering your question, am I willing to pursue a decriminalization strategy as an approach? No.”

“But I am willing to make sure that we’re putting more resources on the treatment and prevention side,” Obama added.

Watch the video from MSNBC, broadcast July 22, 2011 here.

Here's what happened last time Mr. Obama took votes from the public on policy questions...

Once more President Obama wades into the online breach with yet another Facebook Town Hall to solicit questions on policy from the public.  The event takes place on April 20th, a.k.a. 4/20, the unofficial national cannabis holiday, without any sense of irony that these forums have been dominated by marijuana legalization questions every time the public votes on these questions.

(President Obama’s Facebook) WHAT’S HAPPENING
President Barack Obama will hold a special “Facebook Live” townhall to connect with Americans across the country.

WHERE & WHEN IT’S HAPPENING
Where? Well, everywhere! The event at Facebook’s headquarters, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg & COO Sheryl Sandberg, will be live streamed for anyone to watch. Just come back here at the right time: Wednesday, April 20 @ 1:45pm PDT / 4:45pm EDT. Unless invited to attend in person, please do not show up at Facebook HQ. You can watch and participate via the event’s live stream.

WHAT IT’S ABOUT
President Obama will connect with Americans across the country to discuss the tough choices we must all make in order to put our economy on a more responsible fiscal path, while still investing in areas like innovation that will help our economy grow and make America more competitive.

HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE
Facebook will be selecting questions for President Obama to answer during the event. Submit questions now by posting them right here, on this event’s wall. As an alternative, you may submit a question via WhiteHouse.gov/facebooktownhall.

So how in the world can the president avoid what will surely be voted the number one question once again by the online democracy of Facebook?  Simple… don’t let the public vote.  Scott Morgan from DrugWarChronicle has the scoop:

It had become clear that as long as Obama’s forums allowed the public to vote on topics for the president to address, the top-ranked questions would be about legalizing marijuana or even ending the War on Drugs altogether. Reluctant to confront the issue further, the White House recently changed its approach and announced an April 20, 2011 event on Facebook in which participants will not be allowed to vote at all. Questions can be sent in by email or posted on the Facebook page, but Obama’s staff will make selections without any public input.

The inherently democratic, vote-powered economy of ideas on the Internet has proven to be a remarkably powerful tool for discovering content of social value. The ability to click on what you like is the currency of social media and it offers insights into public opinion that may be worth more than meets the eye. The participatory nature of a vote-driven web forum makes people care about the outcome. Advocates for a wide variety of causes are inspired to spread the word and work to make sure their issue gets votes. The Obama Administration has abandoned the process simply to silence one particular idea, but the effect will be to make the forum less interesting for everyone.

Moreover, the rise of marijuana policy into the realm of mainstream public discussion should fascinate, rather than frustrate, our political leadership. It’s a phenomenon that should at least interest our elected officials, even if they don’t yet fully understand or care that marijuana prohibition funds murder in Mexico, that innocent family pets are slaughtered in botched pot raids, that precious wilderness is being devastated by black-market marijuana manufacturing, that racism defines our marijuana arrest rates, that public servants are being corrupted before our eyes, and that we blow billions each year just to keep the situation as bad as it’s been for so long.

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

President Obama responded to the most popular question (or, the eighty most popular questions) 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 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.

President Obama’s Drug War Answer

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.

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 (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLFmGu57jLI).

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 graphic above to read the full-sized version… or continue reading for all the questions…

The Complete Top 100 Questions (click for full size graphic)

Questions #1-#50 (click for full size graphic)

Questions #51-#101 (click for full size graphic)