DUE TO the redundant nature of many of the comments posted so far- "This is depressing, there are much more important issues to deal with," etc, I am asking that people with similar things to say, refrain from posting. I'm interested in your interpretation of this being the #1 question, what you have to say about legalization, and the drug war.
There are plenty of threads about healthcare, the bail out, and whatever else people think are more urgent issues that would benefit from their time. Thank you
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The first round of questions for the transition team's change.gov website came to a close at midnight. The question
""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.?"
is in the lead with 7,947 people liking this question, and 634 people not liking this question.
Overall the first round of questions generated a turnout of 978,947 votes on 10,303 questions from 20,462 people.
It's been a bit of a journey getting here, as anyone can see by peering at my original diary"covering" this. I'll be bluntly honest here, I first saw a link going to change.ORG in a Laws/Legalization section of an online cannabis forum; I mistakenly assumed that this was Obama's transition website change.GOV.
Both sites have a similar purpose: to allow the community to ask, rate, and discuss important questions that they have for the President-elect. But change.gov is the official website that the team will examine, and change.org, well, I really don't know why it was created. There's a comment below that links to another diary that explains what it is, but who knows.
Nevertheless my original posting of this diary was misleading, people complained that I was implying the the official change.gov site. Everyone said "There are much bigger problems than marijuana right now," some complained about the nonstop chirping of legalization advocates. I agree that their are more important issues than legalization, such as overhauling health care, gaining transparency where its needed, and intelligently distributing bailout money; but why does this mean people can't, no matter how briefly so, support legalization?
It seems that at any given time, the mainstream media covers no more than 2 or 3 big issues before one gets tired/old and is replaced. I don't really watch t.v., but I'd guess that right now the outlets are covering the auto bailout, Mumbai/Pakistan stuff, and Greek riots. Why there isn't more coverage, I don't know, maybe due to attention spans.
I know cannabis is an age-old subject, literally, as baby boomers might've thought that cannabis would be legalized by this time. The fact is that the onslaught heaped onto a PLANT, by Harry Anslinger, Nixon, Reagan, and others required the coordination of billions of dollars and countless man hours. It's not going to be easy to undo this, but the public opinion on marijuana is known, and politicians aren't going to be looking for what the public wants, what the public wants needs to be dumped on the desks of those in office.
Obama has said he supports ending federal raids on patients. That is a start, and people need to jubilantly respond to encourage the Administration to do more.
Never tire, never give up.
I'm not interested in hearing cynical remarks about the "grim prospects" of legalization, and how if it was going to happen it would've already happened, because these people "know" people who have been part of the movement before and nothing happened.
We have something they don't- DK, and the Internet, which allows us to reach below the coasean floor, but that's an entirely different discussion about organizational economics.
Onwards.