Top 10 questions on change.gov's "Open for Questions" feature. #1 Legalize marijuana

Currently in the lead:

"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.?"
S. Man, Denton

"What will you do as President to restore the Constitutional protections that have been subverted by the Bush Administration and how will you ensure that our system of checks and balances is renewed?"
Kari, Seattle

"What will you do to establish transparency and safeguards against waste with the rest of the Wall Street bailout money?"
Diane, New Jersy

"Will you lift the ban on Stem Cell research in your first 100 days in office?"
James_M, Nashville, TN


"What will you do to promote science and mathematics education to Elementary and Middle School students?"
JasonWyatt, Raleigh, NC

"Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor - ideally Patrick Fitzgerald - to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?"
Bob Fertik, New York City

"13 states have compassionate use programs for medial Marijuana, yet the federal gov't continues to prosecute sick and dying people. Isn't it time for the federal gov't to step out of the way and let doctors and families decide what is appropriate?"
Greg, Minnesota

"What do you plan to do to our food industry to make it more sustainable? Will there be changes to our farming policies?"
Jentry, Lincoln, NE

"What will you do to end the use of mercenary forces (ie Blackwater) by our military?"
Betsie, Mtn Home, AR

"What will you do first to reduce pollution/waste and incentivize greener behavior across the country?"
Diane, Boston, MA

http://change.gov/page/content/20081211_openforquestions

Listening to potheads brings a crippling weariness to the US.

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others call patients. It's all in the perspective, I suppose. :shrug:

Mental health, self prescribed treatment for various undiagnosed ailments.

Using it 'to feel good' is a medicinal use. Some use it as 'spiritual medicine'. Still, it is medicinal.

:applause:
Look at the rise in young people taking Prozac, Zoloft etc....

How many people could be uplifted instead of further depressed by side effects?

I wonder...who would stand to lose if it were made legal....

... of alcohol in the 1920s _caused_ an enormous crime-wave and spawned the rise of the Mafia. It criminalized normal citizens. Sound familiar? Do you take the occasional drink yourself? You'd have been a criminal then. What changed? A law.

My late mother would have benefitted greatly from pot while she was undergoing chemo for her breast cancer. Instead she vomited herself into a heart attack. (She lived through it all and lasted another 7 years, but with a damaged heart.)

I never smoked pot in college and don't smoke it now that arthritis is setting in, but I voted in favor of decriminalizing the stuff for it's well-proven medicinal value. If it were up to me I'd decriminalized it altogether and empty the jails of those caught with a joint.

By the way, welcome to DU. Enjoy your stay.

Hekate

Yes, I'm just that cynical.

enjoy your stay...:hi:
I am confident that many, many alcoholics voted for McCain also. Right after they were told to do so from some Evangelical pulpit...
:popcorn:
me??? I'll roll one to your memory. :hippie: :smoke:

Who did you vote for?

state of affairs. I am in favor of decriminalization of small amounts.

The whole "War on Drugs" is a joke. Imagine the man hours and money that police would save. They could spend their time going after real criminals and crimes rather than busting people for pot or spending their time in court waiting to testify. Police labs would also free up enormous amounts of time and money by not testing to pot to determine it is pot for court proceedings. DA offices across the country would able to devote their time and energy into prosecuting real criminals and real crimes rather than going to court to send kids to jail. Parole officers would find their workload decreased as well.

How much money and time do school districts, colleges and businesses devote to drug testing? Bill Walton, when he played for UCLA, had permission from John Wooden to smoke pot after games. He said it helped him relax and calm down after playing. Who wouldn't benefit from smoking a joint after a stressful situation.

Besides, if you want to put pot dealers out of business, then legalize it. Let people grow their own. Moreover, a lot of people could save money on pharmaceuticals for a number of ailments - from insomnia to depression - by simply growing their own medicine. It could conceivably create a boom in the home gardening industry. It would also help decrease CO2 and get people back to growing, not only pot, but their own food. People would actually end up eating better. Even better, they would spend a little more time outside and less time inside mindlessly watching television.

If you want people to talk about drugs, what better way to open the door than to make it legal. If it is legal people will talk about it openly and those who need to will be able to seek help (if needed) without the social stigma of doing something illegal.

Better luck in the next life.

think there were NO voters who smoke pot that voted for Obama? I think there were. Of course I do not have a number.

However since apparently there's only 16 million of us in the US who partake (although everybody I know pretty much does which makes me think people lie to polls about that stuff)there has to be a few straights who voted for Obama out there.

friend. I haven't been here for 16 years and so he was the only friend I had when I arrived. I have since met several of his friends and I've made a few friends of my own since I got here. They range from HVAC techs and one with his own remodeling company to white collar positions in manufacturing and even one who works in the office of Northrup-Grumman designing parts for nuclear aircraft carriers. All of them smoke the reefer. When I was in Texas, 8 out of 10 people I know smoked pot. All of us are in jeopardy because of the legal status of weed. It should be legalized.

Seriously, what do children have to do with the price of tea in China (or the legal status of dope?) Do you loose sleep over kids and... cigarettes? alcohol? Sure there'll be abuses, but no more than when the drug is on the black market. Hmmmm, if you were to sell pot out of stores, think it could be policed better? Like cigarettes and alcohol? With it being illegal, it's a free-for-all. The only ones who profit are criminals and lawyers... Ewww!

peace and low stress

peace and low stress my friend

In the mean time, I'm going to keep screaming about 800,000 arrests a year of pot people. Marijuana prohibition has no moral or ethical justification; it's just another tool to screw American citizens, a revenue-enhancing racket for fucking pigs, DAs, brain dead judges, and the prison-industrial complex.

It's no one else's business, for the most part.

It should be legalized.

Working with chronic pain sufferers over the past 5 years has dramatically changed my view of these "stoners."

At least throw us a smiley bone if you're trying to be funny. Cancer patients and other chronic pain sufferers have enough hurdles to overcome without the stigma of being labeled "stoners."

Most Americans do not smoke pot, and most Americans disapprove of the War on Drugs.

It's awfully good for anger management you know.
You might want to try it.

There has been some very positive research done on the plant and it's being found to be useful in halting some cancers and helpful in MS. This plant has medicinal value, something the big pharma doesn't want out there as they can't patent nature and make big bucks from it.

Thanks for the thread, Bleachers.

over the next few years.
:kick: & R

Stem Cell Research IS legal. It's EMBRIONIC Stem Cell Research that's currently banned (not illegal per se). Matter of fact, there are amazing results coming out of this research where you can take adult stem cells and re-grow almost any tissue. It's being done folks, this is not sci-fi. No donor lists. No rejection. Grown-to-order.

the prisons will empty (sorry Cheney), cops will be let go...

Maybe they would be able to focus on something important, like say the real criminals getting away with murder.

that ay farmers could choose to grow either marijuana or industrial hemp. Eventually hemp would become more profitiable than marijuana for most farmers but if farmers were to grow 3% thc or more cannabis for hemp, planted close together to make tall stems, there would still bz a certain percentage of seeded buds per acre. Seeded buds can be used to make hash like they do in Morocco. So the farmers could use the stem's cellulose for organic fuel (some kind of alcohol) or for paper, the fiber from the stem could be used for textiles, the fan leaves could be respread on the field, the seeds which would fall out of the buds during the hash shaking process could all be used to mill flour (there would be lots of seeds per plant) and hemp flour is more nutiritious than wheat flour. So basically the entire plant could be used to produce different products including good hash. Let's see what other plant has so many uses? How much could farmers make if they were to use the entire plant like I described?

By promoting the use of sporks has fallen off the radar.

Change? Yeah, right!

Our nation had a dangerous over-abundance of jazz musicians, you see...