The website change.org is offering folks an opportunity to send an unmistakable message to the incoming administration. By logging onto the website here, visitors can “vote” on whether to “legalize the medicinal and recreational use of marijuana.”
Having gained over 1,800 votes so far, pot legalization is currently the top vote getter in the “criminal justice” category.
UPDATE!!! UPDATE!!!
A few folks have written NORML in the past 24 hours expressing difficulty logging on to the change.org website. If so, try cutting and pasting the following url into your browser:
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/legalize_the_medicinal_and_
recreational_use_of_marijuana
I’ve also listed instructions in the comments section below to help folks better navigating the site and vote.
According to the website:
The ‘Top 10 Ideas for America’ will be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day.
The ‘Top 10 Ideas for America’ will be determined through two rounds of voting. In the first round, ideas will compete against other ideas in the same issue category. The first round will end on December 31, 2008, and the top 3 rated ideas from each category will make it into the second round. The second round of voting will begin on Monday, January 5, and each qualifying idea will compete against the qualifying ideas from all other categories. Second round voting will end on Thursday, January 15.
What happens after voting?
Our work does not end with the voting process or the delivery of the top 10 ideas to the Obama administration on Inauguration Day. That is rather the end of the beginning. Instead of passively hoping the administration accepts each top idea, we will select a formal nonprofit sponsor for each idea to help create a nationwide movement to lobby the administration and Congress to turn the idea into real policy. … We will then build a national campaign to advance each idea in Congress, marshaling the resources of Change.org, MySpace, and our dozens of partner organizations and millions of combined members.
Want to assure that marijuana law reform is one of the “Top 10 Ideas” presented to President-Elect Obama? Then take five minutes to log on to the website and vote.
Please note that change.org is not affiliated with the with the Obama transition team website change.gov. If you have not yet done so, please take a moment today to contact the Office of the President Elect and demand that our next administration engages in a national dialogue on marijuana policy.
Here are three suggested ways that the Obama administration can take immediate, practical steps to reform America’s antiquated and punitive pot laws.
1. President Obama must uphold his campaign promise to cease the federal arrest and prosecution of (state) law-abiding medical cannabis patients and dispensaries by appointing leaders at the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the US Department of Justice, and the US Attorney General’s office who will respect the will of the voters in the thirteen states that have legalized the physician-supervised use of medicinal marijuana.
2. President Obama should use the power of the bully pulpit to reframe the drug policy debate from one of criminal policy to one of public health. Obama can stimulate this change by appointing directors to the Office of National Drug Control Policy who possess professional backgrounds in public health, addiction, and treatment rather than in law enforcement.
3. President Obama should follow up on statements he made earlier in his career in favor of the decriminalization of marijuana by adults by calling for the creation of a bi-partisan Presidential Commission to review the budgetary, social, and health costs associated with federal marijuana prohibition, and to make progressive recommendations for future policy changes.
I tried to cut and paste link provided by Norml on my own bulletin on myspace and the links have been disabled completely even if you cut and past them in your browser you can’t. Tom is one un cool cat.
http://bulletins.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=
bulletin.read&authorID=61871786&messageID=
6253282606&MyToken=d80f4e3c-9c12-4f22-bdb8-d8f80a8f815e
lETS KEEP NON VIOLENT DRUG OFFENDERS OUT OF PRISON AND SAVE THAT SPACE FOR REAL CRIMINALS!
MY CRONIC BACK PAIN IS MUCH BETTER WHEN TREATED WITH A LITTLE MARIJUANA , ALSO HELPS ME SLEEP THROUGH THE NIIGHT INSTEAD OF WAKING REPEATEDLY WITH PAIN..
THINK OF THE TAX $$ THAT CAN BE SAVED, IF WE LEAVE THE NON VIOLENT USER ALONE, AND USR THE $$ TO FIGHT REAL CRIME…NOT TO MENTION THE $$ THAT CAN BE MADE THROUGH THE TAXING OF A USEFUL MEDICINE THAT WAS PUT ON THIS EARTH BY GOD AND NOT CREATED IN A LAB, BY MAN…
It’s funny that people don’t want to legalize. I mean look at the benefits. People are always happy, they don’t have to think you know. They can die in peace. They don’t have to think. Also we can be brothers. and think about our FARC brothers. they need help in stopping the governments of South America from stopping there operations. If governments stopped attacking their drugs they wouldn’t kill people, it’s that simple.
They also say that people are crazy that smoke pot. I don’t think so. I only get mad when they take my pot away. So leave me alone, let me get high, let me be free, down with government up with Narcoterrorism.
I learned in Texas that if you grab the bull by the horns you may get thrown and trampled. It is wiser to get that critter where it hurts. Lead him by the nose-ring and he follows gently. Perhaps it’s the same with marijuana. People are being thrown by the district attorneys. I suggest we grab them where it hurts, JURY TRIALS!!!!! How many people on that jury are smokers. It only takes one to hang the proceedings. Let us clog the courts with JURY TRIALS!!!!!
YES – We got him in office thus he should do as we ask.
OBVIOUSLY the Truth has been exposed and fact is that hemp/jane/herb whatever you wish to call it, is and always has been benificial to the human body, mind, spirit and conscious.
SMOKING is not the only to ingest and the plant itself is useful beyond you can imagine (textlixe/cloths/food/fuel/paper/medicines/dna enhances/Fighting and Preventing BREAST cancer and many others) RESEARCH and PROTEST people.
HERB SHOULD BE 100% Legalized in all states and countries of the world. Its a plant! No Additives/No preservesatives/artificial chemicals and other labotory things to give you cancers and diesese.
Stop letting them poison us and our babies and lets all go back to our natural roots and ways of living. Earth will forgive you for it!
http://www.theweedreport.com/profiles/blogs/americans-tell-obama-they-want
SHUDOSHI
http://www.earbubbles.com
http://www.myspace.com/SHUDOSHI <- THE OFFICIAL WEED SONG!
All you alcoholic, wife cheating, money stealin, two face congressmen need to get a reality check and just make it legal!! It’s less harmfull than anything your doing rapeing the us people out of millions of tax dollars. This is the same people that say no thats bad for you, no thats not right but in the back of the shop they are sticking money in there pockets by any legal or illegal means they see fit!! Stop being A-HOLES and legalize it!! Or look at it the us government way, while your getting drunk in your office or at home think of all the money it would bring in and that you can steal from too!