Thursday, December 11, 2008

More ways to get the message to the President-elect At President-elect Obama's site: change.gov, they have instituted a new system for people to ask questions and then others vote on the questions to bring them to the top of the pile. It's called Open for Questions There are already over 5,000 questions, and currently in the top 30 or so is 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.?" It might be worth adding some questions about drug policy -- but first search for ones that have already been asked and vote them higher (there are, for example, over 100 questions with the word "marijuana"). --- Over at Change.org (that's not the Obama change.gov site, but a separate private site) they have a section of Ideas for America, where you can also submit ideas and vote on them (and the top vote getters will be submitted to the Presidential transition team). In the criminal justice section, the current top idea (by a rather significant margin so far) is "Legalize the Medicinal and Recreational Use of Marijuana" ("End the War on Drugs" is number 4). The top vote-getters are moved on to a second round. --- Both Change.gov and Change.org require registering in order to submit questions/ideas or to vote. I don't know what kind of impact any of this can have, but I'm all for getting the word out in as many ways as possible to as many people as possible. Update: The marijuana question at change.gov is currently 4th. Questions will be closed tonight at midnight and they'll answer the top ones (new question opportunities next week). 9:21:57 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []