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The White House Responds To We the People Petition
First time accepted submitter Nysul writes "The White House, aiming to gather the opinion (or marketing data) of the internet nation, asked for our thoughts by creating the We the People site and now it has responded to some of the more popular petitions, such as marijuana reform and separation of church and state. You probably won't be surprised at the answers."
...I read their claim that marijuana is addictive. You can lie to my face all you want, but don't expect me to vote for you.
If marijuana is half as bad as they claim, shouldn't Barack Obama, former marijuana and cocaine user, resign immediately and be placed in a maximum security prison?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Pretty good read.
tl;dr version: Fair tax isn't fair.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The translation for most of these is really simple: The obvious political calculations don't support the petitions. The vast majority of people who support the decriminalization of pot are people who would vote for Obama anyways. (There might be some libertarians in the Tea Party but even bringing up legalization at their rallies had lead to booing. See e.g. http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Pot-Legalization-Brings-Boos-at-Tea-Party-Rally.). The only one that's even more blatant than that is the petition answer about removing "under God" from the pledge of allegiance. The people who care about that definitely aren't going to vote for anyone other than Obama (well, if Huntsman won the Republican primary then maybe, but right now he's polling at 2% among registered Republicans...). That petition response is even more noteworthy for having a nice mix of trying to claim that non-believers make up an important part of the US even as Obama endorses the claim that God is important to nation. The worst part of all this is that his political calculation is correct: Next election I'm probably going to be voting for him. Because the other option will be a lot worse.
I don't know how they can talk about legalizing marijuana and act like it's illegal because of health issues. if that was the case then shouldn't smoking and drinking alcohol also be illegal? It seems like they aren't open to serious discussion on any of these topics and just copy and pasted some default answers.
Everything on the Marijuana is bad list is probably doubly applicable to alcohol. Cigarettes, aside from the cognitive impairment, are infinitely worse than smoking pot is for you.
Regulate and tax it like cigarettes and booze. It's really not that complicated.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
a petition to take petitions seriously:
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl
so, when is the revolution, guys?
how much proof do we need that they do not care about our needs or wants or even justice??
it would be one thing is there was a fair reply that held water; but this was a sham in every sense of the word.
since the system does not serve us, I say its time to start the revolution. we gave things a fair chance but they just don't want to listen to us.
time for REAL CHANGE. voting booths don't bring change, btw. they lull us into thinking we have a voice.
look at these lying replies to our issues. they don't care! in our faces, blatantly, they do not care!
I hope things get messy real soon. because that is the hope and change we can believe in.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
No one should have thought that this We the People thing would bring about any measurable change. It's an exercise in false hope of efficacy in the legislative/executive process. 150k signatures supporting marijuana legalization/reform and the best answer they could come up with is a bunch of scare tactics and anti-drug rhetoric based around studies that were ineffective and the lack of studies because of the nature of the substance being tested.
You want real change for marijuana policy? Run for local office, get people to support you, and defeat the incumbents who stand in your way. Get the local laws to support your goals and work your way up the chain.
As for the education funding reform response, it's just pushing the Obama administration's education agenda. The petition signed by 32k visitors called for a bailout of recent graduates as the best economic stimulus possible for that generation. The response is nothing more than what you'd expect to receive from a Congressperson when you write vehemently in favor of or opposing a piece of legislation: the Congressperson will summarize the bill, summarize their position, and essentially say "thank you for your feedback".
Again, if you want real reform, get elected and don't let yourself get corrupted. Good luck; you'll need it.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
The fair tax contains provision for allowing the basics to go untaxed. This is why it is NOT unfair to the middle and lower classes. Not mentioning this is paramount to bald faced deception.
Current tax mechanism in a nutshell
Why the current tax system is hopelessly regressive
Why a/the fair tax is FAIR
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I found a petition to stop software patents, but was unsuccessful in finding one that demanded a drastic reduction in copyright term in order to create a strong public domain for e.g. sound recordings.
Since I'm not a US citizen it wouldn't be right for me to create one, but it makes one wonder: did no one think about this, or have they been removed?
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
POTUS has failed on so many bold promises already, why should I care how he responds to petitions? Sort of worry about whether the fertilizer a serial killer is using in his garden is organic or not.
Gitmo is still open.
The Patriot Act is just about as strong as ever.
Wars are multiplying, though he does get credit for winding down Iraq (way too slowly) and Libya (bonus credit for keeping boots off the ground, but loses them for getting us involved in the first place).
The economy is still a wreck, and his limp wristed efforts have done nothing but embolden his detractors and sully the chances of trying a truly bold stimulus plan.
So yeah, I got about what I expected from a bozo who has long ago lost my vote. Not that I voted for him the first time, as I saw through his grandiose speeches by looking up his voting record on things I cared about.
Is the mare transparent?
From the article:
"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 "
Well, if that's your standard for keeping marijuana illegal, may I suggest adding:
Tobacco: Also associated with nicotine addiction, respiratory disease and cancer
Alcohol: Also associated with addiction, liver disease and cognitive impairment
Oh wait, those have huge lobbists behind them. Nevermind.
I use it medically and I have to choose to take it every day. There is no compulsion to take it, it isn't addictive at all. My town is rather isolated physically so we have several rehab centers here and I meet patients regularly. I have never heard of anyone needing treatment to stop smoking pot. I have met people that stopped and none of them needed treatment or had any trouble stopping. The withdrawal from pot is the 'munchies' that you get when it's wearing off. That is easily treated with cookie therapy.
Theyre not on a mission from God.. theyre on a mission from Pfizer.
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN
even funnier
Agreed. This is the petition to sign. Call them on their doublespeak.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Click on his link, it's a very good one.
And does this study distinguish between those going to hospital due to marijuana and those there for other reasons who happen to have pot in their system? Personally ive never seen someone need to go to hospital due to pot use alone ( and im sure im not the only one thats seen people smoke very large amounts of the stuff over a night and even wake up hangover free if maybe a bit dazed) I call bullshit that majiuana puts anywhere near half the number of people that alcohol does.
You are wrong.
The fact that people are being arrested, jailed, and stolen from, by their government, this very day, on no other basis than a sensationalized excuse of a power grab, is a continuing injustice. You can stand on that side of the line and apologize for the government, but that makes you part of the problem. You apologize for the thousands of ruined lives, millions of wasted dollars, and literally uncountable, unquantifiable cost to our liberty caused by the War on Certain People using Certain Substances, and that makes you no better than the scum directly perpetuating these crimes against free people.
How about legalizing it so we can stop spending billions of dollars on cannabis enforcement, generate millions (possibly billions) in taxes on its sales, and at the same time cut off American gangs and Central and South American drug cartels at the knees by taking away control of one of their biggest products?
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Sorry, but if you think making pot legal will stop organized drug crime in any way, you're mistaken. They'll continue to rake in money for pills, cocaine, opiates, underage girls, etc. They would likely even become more violent to protect those remaining assets after losing their pot income.
And if you think a pot tax is going to raise significant revenue, you're also mistaken. Especially when the market for illegal pot exists, with no taxes, and everyone who smokes it already knows where to get it that way. The criminal pot element will always exist. It even still exists with alcohol and cigarettes. People try to skirt taxes on everything all the time, buying across state borders or making their own.
The irony is that the same people who yell for pot taxation would be much of the same hypocrites still buying it on street corners to save a buck.
Like I said, heard it before.
It's not really about the medical issues, it's about freedom and choice. Society has had to learn to live with the costs of tobacco and alcohol - which are higher - because people get really tetchy if you make those against the law; they start breaking that law right and left and giving money to murderous gangsters. (Yes it happened with tobacco, too - when Canada jacked up the taxes until it was worth breaking the law to smuggle smokes in from the states. In no time, there was gunplay between those doing the smuggling over stealing each other's loads, and the usual turf rights. We had to ratchet down the taxes again.)
It's not about "wanting to get high" - people who don't touch the stuff support legalization. Some, from a more abstract reverence for individual freedom. Others, because of the high costs: It's about 20 million arrests. It's about $16 billion per year. (That's at all three gov't levels). It's enough to pay for 25,000 of those "lavish" teacher retirement funds. Every year.
The waste of $16B may sound small these days as the USA tosses hundreds of billions at banks and more at defense expenditures. But it works out to $150/household/year in the US - and since only half pay taxes, it costs $300 per tax-paying household. To put people in jail that, if they grew and sold tobacco, would be called "upstanding taxpaying citizens". Still think that's "nonsense"?
Your logic, as is current drug policy, is foolishness. Your contention is this substance is harmful, therefore it should be illegal. Your contention is people should be arrested, processed through our courts, and jailed and/or imprisoned. Over a plant. What makes this foolish, is your assumption that making something illegal makes it unavailable. In fact, the opposite is true. The only thing prohibition policy does is creates a black market. That's it. Black market profiteers don't fear getting their 7-11 shut down, so they have no incentive to follow the prohibition law. You can only control availability when it is legal, but regulated. Like tobacco. Prohibition, making something illegal, merely determines who profits from the substance.
But what's worse, is your ignorance behind the statement this issue is not worthy of the President's time. Make no mistake, drug prohibition is one of the most significant social justice issues of our generation. Over 50,000 Mexican citizens have been murdered in the last 5 years. We only lost 3,000 on 9/11 in America. Over 750,000 Americans are arrested every year for possession of a plant. Over $1 Trillion dollars has been wasted over the last 40 years on the failed war on drugs, which is really a war on its own citizens.
Just because a substance is not healthy, does not mean it should be criminalized. In fact, as we learned in the 20's, the consequences of prohibition are far more disastrous.
Bottom line, the CSA (Controlled Substances Act), or at least the criminalizing prohibition pieces, must be repealed, just as the 18th Amendment was repealed.
“Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes.”
— Abraham Lincoln
Same reason he dropped the long form census. Facts go against conservative logic. It's easier to pass things without facts.
Hell, even with facts, it doesn't matter with these guys. Crime at it's lowest point in years? Oh - but 'unreported' crime is up. We better expand prisons, add mandatory minimums. For drug offences no less. Back to the fucking cave.
Sent from my PDP-11
People who willingly break the law are the problem. Especially when they do it for petty selfish reasons.
People who blindly accept that legal/illegal and right/wrong are isometric, that there is no unjust law, and that the argument is settled because the government said so are a far larger problem. Especially when they do it for petty, selfish reasons.
So let's see here..
TOPIC:
Religion in the Public Square
RESPONSE:
That's why President Obama supports the use of the words "under God' in our Pledge of Allegiance and "In God we Trust' on our currency.
DE-STUPIDIFIED:
Nope, we're keeping this govt. sanctioned religion!
TOPIC:
Taking Action to Reduce the Burden of Student Loan Debt
RESPONSE:
We know that these steps don’t solve all our problems in higher education. There is still more work to be done to make it possible for every American to earn a quality education. But enormous progress has been made.
DE-STUPIDIFIED:
We lowered the interest rates on these loans saving them a few hundred dollars and gave some people $5500, what more do you want from us?
TOPIC:
The Fair Tax – A National Sales Tax That Increases Tax Burdens for Middle-Class Families
RESPONSE:
In short, because it raises burdens on middle-class families and asks less from the most fortunate, this national sales tax is inconsistent with President Obama's principles for tax reform.
DE-STUPIDIFIED:
We can't really give you a good reason why we don't support the Fair Tax, so we've decided to present clear propaganda against it. Even the title of this section on our website indicates that it places an unfair burden on middle class families despite it doing no such thing. And throughout our response we've constantly hinted at this despite it being entirely false (but please don't actually research the Fair Tax, else you might discover that to be the case). The answer is no, that's all. We want tax reform, just tax reform that's inherently complex and has loopholes for our corporate owners (thanks guys, those millions and free tax evasion tips are really nice)!
TOPIC:
What We Have to Say About Legalizing Marijuana
RESPONSE:
Preventing drug use is the most cost-effective way to reduce drug use and its consequences in America.
DE-STUPIDIFIED:
We didn't actually answer your question in this response. We dodged it over and over by talking about drug-related things. We made sure to drill that point home "drug." We want you to walk away from our "response to legalizing marijuana" remembering that we said the word "drug" in our response 17 times, more than any other word. In short: fuck you hippies. Marijuana would compete with alcohol and tobacco. You really think I'm going to give up $50,000,000 in campaign contributions so you can get high with your buddies with no consequences? LOL!
TOPIC:
Why We Can’t Comment [at allegations of Judicial misconduct]
RESPONSE:
For the reasons given above, the White House declines to comment on matters raised by this petition.
DE-STUPIDIFIED:
Fuck off.
Stay classy, Washington. Keep up the good work. Not answering questions and constantly refusing your citizens the right to have the country run the way they want is a fucking brilliant way to go about running a democratic country. Oh wait, I made the mistake of assuming we still live in a democracy, didn't I? Lol. It's so funny watching them tell us why they won't do what we want. Nobama, 2012.
Ignoring some of the more blatant forms of stupid in that response, I'll just point out that while it's possible to traffic in bootleg cigarettes, enough people find it easier to just pay taxes on the legal version that they generate in excess of 16 billion dollars in tax revenue per year. Source: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=403
If you hit even a small fraction of that, it would still be a pretty significant amount of revenue for cash-strapped state governments.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
"If you are going to create a public petition system, then take the petitions seriously.
Dismissing the top petitions with canned responses invalidates the whole exercise."
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/take-petitions-seriously/bHPkPddj
3 000/25 000 signatures
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
It's even simpler than some kind of religious psychosis: There are hundreds of thousands of jobs, maybe millions involved in the Drug War. There are very powerful and wealthy people deeply invested in the Drug War. The Drug War is not merely about one extra task for police officers. It's about millions of US dollars spent on turning our police forces into para-military organizations. It's about spending tax dollars on tech companies that produce infrared scanners to look through the walls of homes in search of grow lights. It's about keeping the prison industrial system growing and growing, despite violent crime falling and falling. It's about maintaining profits for drug companies who's offerings might be rejected in favor of banned drugs, were those alternatives not illegal and representing risk of arrest, job loss, etc... This applies to both "medical" drug companies as well as "recreational" ones like the alcohol and tobacco industries. How many thousands of attorneys specialize in defending or prosecuting drug cases? How much insane profit do the organized crime syndicates make due to drug illegality?
Alcohol Prohibition was a beta test. People figured out how to make amazing money in such an environment. This is about money and power, and not at all about protecting anyone from anything.
With all this marijuana / church crap (add guns ownership, gay mariage and other distractions) your lovely government is trying to keep your attention as far as possible from important things. See, they're making so much noise about this crappy site, yet thousands and thousands of people occupying centers of so many cities, trying to bring attention to THE real issue are completely ignored (and sometimes tear-gased and flash-banged) by the same government, and shamelessly ridiculed / silenced by your corporate media.
Since 2008 crash not a single fraudster who caused this fiasco was sentenced (and don't bring in Madoff - he was jailed because he tried also stealing from other fraudsters, not only from ordinary people). Instead of resolving this issue, government is actively covering up all these crimes and handsomely paying for all bad bets of said fraudsters from your taxes, your future and your children future. There is a lot of budget deficit noise lately but if you look at it closer, you'll see that it will only harm ordinary people and science budgets. Lucrative corporate contracts, army contracts will remain intact (and grow over time). Banksters will surely go back for another round of bailouts (it's easy money after all) and they'll get what they want. Government officials will cover up all corporate wrongdoings in hope to end up on in some well paid corporate job. This vicious circle is called regulatory capture and there is propably nothing left to deal with it - except for (non-violent !!!) civil disobedience.
I'm a foreigner from post-communist country who was growing up in crappy communist system, it strikes me that communism was very similiar to contemporary corporate state (no wonder China succeeds). There are actually two sides of the same coin - both on state level (de-facto central planning in US and EU, lobbied by corporate sponsors) and inside corporations themselves (levels of sillyness and ineffeciencies are comparable, if not greater to those in state-owned enterprises in post-communist countries). There are differences of course - technology went forward a lot, corporate state has way better PR and allows for private enterprises (more and more limited by thousands of corporate-sponsored regulations). Actually, communist China mastered this by keeping their core communist system intact (chinese exporter still needs to give away all his earned dollars in exchange for freshly printed CNYs) and allowing for limited private enterprises (oh, irony - less limited than in the West!). Let me stress this again: communism and corporate state are the two sides of the same coin !
While I'm watching what OWS folks do, I see so many similiarities with what my father in Solidarity movement was doing 30 years ago in Poland. Once again that's striking to me - you're basically at the same point of this process we've been in early 80's. Just don't get distracted by "Hope & Change" crapola, "Republicans vs Democrats" fraud. Don't get distracted by "We The People Petition" - government-sponsored PR scams aren't worth wasting your time. Don't get co-opted by some political party and don't get divided between (fraudulent) political lines (your lovely corporate media will try their best to do this). And don't let violence to outbreak - white shirts from police will be more than happy seeing this. They know how to deal with violence but have no idea how to deal with peaceful protests. That's why see things like Antony Bologna fiasco and I admire how OWS folks dealt with this - it was briliant. And finally, don't let your government to incite next great war (every f*ng estabullshitment tries this when it runs out of options). I wish you good lock goig forward with this.
No, that would be the sensible thing to do. That's not how politics works.
You could use his argument as an argument for the prohibition of basically any currently-legal thing.
I find it remarkable how little people seem to understand about addiction. Perhaps that is why people who want to keep MJ a Schedule 1 narcotic use it as an excuse.
Your brain produces chemicals that cause pleasure, deep down in the reptile brain. These are called reward pathways, and the most prevalent is the dopamine reward pathway. They work exactly like a rat hitting the button for a food pellet, but their triggers are rooted in evolution. For example, when you eat fatty foods, even though you know it is bad for you, you enjoy it and you crave more of it because foods that is dense in fat and simple sugars are rare in Nature, so evolution favored those whose brains rewarded them for seeking out and consuming these foods.
When the levels of a particular reward-pathway-chemical (let's call them endorphins) remain high your brain does what it always does when presented with a constant stimulus; it learns to ignore it, typically by becoming less sensitive to that endorphin (e.g., decreasing the number of receptors for it.) If you take that endorphin away suddenly, you experience withdraw as your brain re-adapts to the lower levels of that endorphin (many of which are required at some level for normal brain functions.)
People can become "addicted" to running or weight lifting or any other type of physical exercise because the endorphins that the body released cause a good feeling. Conversely, when one doesn't work out for a while, the body craves those endorphins and causes that nagging "I need to go to the gym" feeling.
Nicotine bypasses the normal route of the brain releasing an endorphin to reinforce "productive" behavior and just ramps up the dopamine reward pathway for no good reason. When I was trying to quit smoking, I would get a mad craving---even months after having abstained---when I got in the car, because I had conditioned myself to smoke when I got in the car. You can use cigarettes to create such a positive reinforcement for almost any behavior. Opiates (heroine, morphine, etc.) mimic chemicals that your brain produces in small quantities for various reasons (including reward) rather than just pushing the reward button directly, like nicotine.
Even strong chemical addictions like opiates and nicotine are somewhat contextual. For instance, the rate of addiction to morphine from medical treatment is near zero, because you do not form a positive connection between morphine and reward. Soldiers coming back from Vietnam were addicted to heroin in huge numbers, but had a much, much easier time quitting than the average addict because they never did heroin in the context of their normal lives back home.
Like exercising or eating fatty foods, consuming marijuana also triggers reward pathways, but exponentially less than nicotine or opiates (or alcohol). Thus, it does not create chemical dependance--but it can lead to mild addiction. Playing video games also triggers reward pathways and, if you smoke pot every time you play a video game, the act of playing a video game can induce a craving for pot. Likewise, if you smoke strains that cause the munchies, and stuff your face with Little Debbie snack cakes every time you smoke pot, then you are inadvertently conditioning your body to connect the positive-reinforcement of eating fatty foods with smoking pot. So which is addictive? The snack cakes, the video games, or the pot?
Non-chemical addiction works exactly the same way, but rather than being associated with a particular reward pathway, it is just "habit" (conditioning). If my evening routine is to come home and take a bong hit, then when I don't get that bong hit, I feel as if something is off (and may become irritable as a result.) The same is true of drinking a beer when you come home, or eating at McDonalds on Friday.
Smoking pot long-term does cause structural changes in the brain. But so does learning the piano or a second language. If you smoke pot every day to relax, then you will be a bit irritable when you stop. If you smoke c
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
Jeez, has nobody linked to this already? Here's NORML's point-by-point carefully reasoned response to the White House: http://blog.norml.org/2011/10/29/white-house-response-to-normls-we-the-people-marijuana-legalization-petition/#more-7406
Highlights:
“Addiction” links to a NIDA page noting the lifetime dependence rate of cannabis to be 9% – that is, 9 in 100 people who try cannabis will develop a dependence. Kerlikowske does not mention that caffeine has the same 9% rate, alcohol is a 15% rate, and tobacco is a 32% rate
“Respiratory disease” links to a 2008 Science Daily article on a study entitled “Bullous Lung Disease due to Marijuana” which looked at the cases of ten people who came in already complaining of lung problems, who admitted they smoked pot over a year.
“Cognitive impairment” links to a 1996 NIDA fact sheet on studies of cognitive impairment involving card sorting. Since then A 2001 study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry found chronic users who quit for a week “showed no significant differences from control subjects”. A 2002 clinical trial published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal determined, “Marijuana does not have a long-term negative impact on global intelligence.”
And it goes on and on. Jeez, the informational content of Chief Kerlikowske's report really is close to zero, isn't it?
How is a Congress controlled in both houses by your own party considered "hostile"?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I have recently experienced some modest insight into this incomprehensible (to me and perhaps you) way of thinking (legal = right) by seeing Sandel's lecture on communitarian moral philosophy and recalling a TED talk on the empirical psychological differences between liberal and conservative values.
Of course, it wasn't that I thought of all conservatives as slavering idiots or scheming monsters or anything. You can basically understand and respect their motives by knowing and listening to them; you don't need no fancy book lernin. Conversely, approaching from a different angle doesn't make them any less wrong, when they're wrong. Still, it was interesting and humbling to look at the issue a different (for me) way.
I still don't agree with the communitarian idea that we need a moral explanation for group-oriented choices, or the idea that many people have that adhering to group law is in itself a moral good. I wasn't compelled by any of the examples I saw in Sandel's lecture, of situations where you would allegedly need to choose between a group (communitarian moral) obligation and a liberal moral one. I would still call it immoral to help your friend bury a body, no questions asked, just because they're your friend. However, these ideas do provide another way to look at things from the perspective of my many brothers and sisters who do think that way, either communitarian or conservative.
By way of kudos to Sandel, I had no idea he was a communitarian (even if a moderate one) after watching his course lecture videos. Being more or less ignorant of this subject, I hadn't read about his criticism of Rawls. Maybe you could tell he wasn't totally on board with the libertarians, but he still gave the ideas a fair hearing, it seemed to me (if in my ignorance).
(Terminology alert: if you have trouble distinguishing the word "liberal" in the political context from the term in the philosophical context, please fix that before replying. It's trivial to do so.)