President Obama,
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 offered this in 2010 you heard from us loud and clear about cannabis law reform. We asked about re-scheduling cannabis to allow medical marijuana to flourish, decriminalizing cannabis to end thousands of arrests, legalizing pot to raise tax revenue, ending prohibition to cripple Mexican drug traffickers, regulating pot 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.
Prior to this in 2009 you got the same response from the public. That time you didn’t ignore us; you just laughed at us.
We know you’re a busy man and there are many pressing issues facing this country. So time was taken to review the Top 100 questions on the "Ask Obama" site 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 (Jobs & Economy, Foreign policy & National Security, Health Care, Education, Immigration, Energy & Environment, and Other) is presented and 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.
Out of 97,344 people who have submitted 77,551 questions and cast 826,973 votes, the Top 100 Questions (as of Tuesday, 10pm Pacific) were in relation to our current approach with the drug war, finally at the 101st question we get something else. Now Mr. President, I believe it's clear what the people of the United States want an answer to, are you going to give us this answer?
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 offered this in 2010 you heard from us loud and clear about cannabis law reform. We asked about re-scheduling cannabis to allow medical marijuana to flourish, decriminalizing cannabis to end thousands of arrests, legalizing pot to raise tax revenue, ending prohibition to cripple Mexican drug traffickers, regulating pot 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.
Prior to this in 2009 you got the same response from the public. That time you didn’t ignore us; you just laughed at us.
We know you’re a busy man and there are many pressing issues facing this country. So time was taken to review the Top 100 questions on the "Ask Obama" site 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 (Jobs & Economy, Foreign policy & National Security, Health Care, Education, Immigration, Energy & Environment, and Other) is presented and 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.
Out of 97,344 people who have submitted 77,551 questions and cast 826,973 votes, the Top 100 Questions (as of Tuesday, 10pm Pacific) were in relation to our current approach with the drug war, finally at the 101st question we get something else. Now Mr. President, I believe it's clear what the people of the United States want an answer to, are you going to give us this answer?
