Monday, October 31, 2011

Petitions in a can

Hello all,
This being the first of hopefully many blogs to come, I thought I should focus on a subject near and dear to my heart. That most beautiful of plants, with a most distinct and recognizable odor, cannabis. In the not so recent past the Obama administration, in an attempt to garner 'transparency advocate' votes, began a site entitle We The People. The (supposed)  purpose of this site was to give the public a way to 'petition' the government on issues that are important to the public, the voters, the represented. After garners close to 50k signatures in the first week, and clutching nearly 75k as of the end of October, the Obama administration has finally decided to release a response. Needless to say if you've ever written your Senators or Congressmen/women you would quite quickly recognize the canned nature of the response. It is made even more abundantly clear of how opaque they're making government in their citation references. If one actually takes the time to examine their proposed "evidence" one would quickly find that none of the citations back any of their statements, except in the most broad of possible approaches. They directly avoided the comparisons with currently legal and FAR MORE DANGEROUS substances (tobacco, alcohol) that were expressly addressed in the petition, yet noticeably absent from their response to the issue at hand. I have to say this was an abysmal failure on the part of this administrations efforts to produce a more transparent and less opaque government. It boggles the mind to consider that these people actually think they're representative of their constituency when they REPEATEDLY deny acknowledgment of their constituents concerns.

With the release of the response, it has since generated several new petitions in attempts to catch those in power in the hypocrisy they advocate by calling for the regulation of Alcohol and Tobacco in a similar manner to Cannabis since they are, by every study EVER done, far and away more dangerous than even PURE THC. There has also been the appearance of a couple petitions calling for the resignation of the current Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske. While I would agree with this to a certain degree, he is by policy abliged to LIE to the public. Yes you read that right, it has been legislated that the government MUST LIE TO THE PUBLIC. Read here to understand this lunacy.

Needless to say this has all left a very bad taste in many peoples mouths in regards to Obama's election campaign. Not to mention a re-affirmation of the governments continued policies of blind ignorant discrimination against an UNREFINED PLANT. It appalling to no end that even in the face of DECADES of studies and research, OUR LEADERS (notice not representatives, because they obviously DO NOT represent us) continue to publicly publish dogma, lies and false information in regards to cannabis. I urge anyone who comes across this to fill their representatives and the Obama administrations communication lines with requests for a LEGITIMATE response and not something that is kept in a filing cabinet for distribution to the public. The hypocrisy has got to stop. Those in elected positions that do not represent their constituents need to be removed. Policies that go against the will of the public (as has been published umpteen different times in dozens of different polls). Representatives that don't represent the people who put them there, need to be removed.