A proposal to legalize and regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol zoomed to the top of the White House’s official online petition site on Thursday, the same day it was launched. The idea is the first on the site to get enough signatures to pass the threshold needed to get an official response from the Administration.
The White House has promised to evaluate and issue a formal response to any idea on the “We The People” site that gets more than 5,000 signatures within 30 days, reports Brandon Sasso at The Hill. The marijuana legalization idea more than 17,000 signatures as of Friday morning, about 24 hours after it was posted.
The proposal asks, “Isn’t it time to legalize and regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol? If not, please explain why you feel that the continued criminalization of cannabis will achieve the results in the future that it has never achieved in the past?”
The petition was created by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, reports Eric W. Dolan at The Raw Story.
The fifth and sixth most popular petitions on the site, as of Friday morning, also concern the legalization of marijuana. A petition regarding industrial hemp was at seventh place. All three were nearing the 5,000-signature threshold to garner an official response.
The White House has, so far, not made a formal response to the legalization question.
Cannabis legalization questions have dominated every one of President Obama’s YouTube question-and-answer sessions. The President laughed off the question at the first YouTube session, but seemed somewhat chagrined by the indignant response; by the second session, Obama was calling legalization a “perfectly legitimate discussion.”
During a Twitter town hall event, when Obama answered users’ questions in real time, the most retweeted question was about marijuana legalization. The moderator of the online event, Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, did not ask Obama the question.
To participate in the White House’s “We The People” petition process, click here.
