Even by that already low standard, the new response from the White House regarding a petition to allow states to decide the legal status of marijuana is a truly pathetic. From the White House:

Thank you for participating in We the People and speaking out on the legalization of marijuana. Coming out of the recent election, it is clear that we’re in the midst of a serious national conversation about marijuana.

At President Obama’s request, the Justice Department is reviewing the legalization initiatives passed in Colorado and Washington, given differences between state and federal law. In the meantime, please see a recent interview with Barbara Walters in which President Obama addressed the legalization of marijuana.

Barbara Walters:

Do you think that marijuana should be legalized?

President Obama:

Well, I wouldn’t go that far.  But what I think is that, at this point, Washington and Colorado, you’ve seen the voters speak on this issue.  And as it is, the federal government has a lot to do when it comes to criminal prosecutions.  It does not make sense from a prioritization point of view for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that under state law that’s legal. [...]

The official “response” from the White House is that they have no response, but in the meantime try to guess what Obama may have been implying in past interviews. Why even bother to issue a response if you aren’t even going to address the petition?

The small silver lining is that a meaningless non-response is better than a negative one. Since voters in Washington State and Colorado overwhelming approved marijuana legalization the administration seems to be going out of its way to ignore the issue as much as possible.

According to scientists at the National Institutes of Health- the world’s largest source of drug abuse research – marijuana use is associated with addiction, respiratory disease, and cognitive impairment. We know from an array of treatment admission information and Federal data that marijuana use is a significant source for voluntary drug treatment admissions and visits to emergency rooms. Studies also reveal that marijuana potency has almost tripled over the past 20 years, raising serious concerns about what this means for public health – especially among young people who use the drug because research shows their brains continue to develop well into their 20′s. Simply put, it is not a benign drug.

Like many, we are interested in the potential marijuana may have in providing relief to individuals diagnosed with certain serious illnesses. That is why we ardently support ongoing research into determining what components of the marijuana plant can be used as medicine. To date, however, neither the FDA nor the Institute of Medicine have found smoked marijuana to meet the modern standard for safe or effective medicine for any condition.

As a former police chief, I recognize we are not going to arrest our way out of the problem. We also recognize that legalizing marijuana would not provide the answer to any of the health, social, youth education, criminal justice, and community quality of life challenges associated with drug use.

*emphasis mine

Given that the main “criminal justice” problem related to marijuana use is that marijuana is illegal, I can definitely say legalization would provide an answer to that problem. For the Obama administration to say otherwise is both a lie and high disrespectful to the basic intelligence of the over 70,000 people who signed the petitions.

Here is a link to the responses to the White House’s insultingly dismissive statement on the petitions from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and NORML.

As a result of receiving only a single dismissive response to seven different petitions, a new petition on the We the People site has been started asking Obama to “Actually take these petitions seriously instead of just using them as an excuse to pretend you are listening.”  That petition  already has over 7,000 signatures.

President Obama has again demonstrated that instead of using the executive powers to greatly advance marijuana reform he has restated the decision to use his power to wage war against medical marijuana. On the issue of marijuana policy Obama is not only radically out of step with the young voters he’s depending on to win in 2012, but increasingly out of step with the mainstream of the country.

Every time the Obama administration gives Americans the ability to use the internet to indicate what policies they want to be debated more, the issue of marijuana reform has dominated.

• Right after winning the 2008 election the Obama team on Change.gov allowed Americans to vote for questions they wanted the president elect to answer. A marijuana legalization question easily got enough votes to be ranked #1, and the marijuana question dominated the top slots.  The Obama team basically ignored the issue.
• In March of 2009 the Obama administration allowed people to submit and vote for questions for a live internet town hall. Again a marijuana legalization question dominated the voting.
• In January 2011 Obama teamed up with Youtube to have another open question and answer session. All of the top 10 Youtube questions with the most votes were about marijuana reform.
• In Jule 2011, possibly because the Obama team was getting annoyed with marijuana dominating every open question system that allowed voting, they held a Twitter town hall. Despite there being no voting, indicators show that marijuana reform questions were the most popular with people engaged in the town hall, but the question was not put to the president.
• Just a few days ago Obama team started a new “We the People” petition program that allows Americans to directly petition the White House online. This time a marijuana legalization petition was the first petition to pass the 5,000 threshold, and it is still the most popular petition on the site.

Marijuana reform is an issue many Americans, especially younger Americans, care deeply about, but it is often totally ignored by our political system. Now the internet has provided young Americans with a tool they can use to force the issue into our national political discourse.

As the 2012 race starts to heat up, expect the issue of marijuana reform to continue to dominate any attempts by Obama to use the internet to have two way communications with voters. Thanks to the internet, there is no way Obama will be able to ignore the issue, especially if his campaign is going to be focused on getting young voters to turnout for him.