Whitehouse.gov is a new site put fourth by the Obama administration in which any petition which receives 25,000 signatures within 1 month is promised a response by the government. Recently there were several petitions written on The White House in regards to the legalization and regulation of marijuana. The response can be seen here: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitio...ate-marijuana-manner-similar-alcohol/y8l45gb1 It cites multiple fallacies as well as disseminates misleading information about marijuana. Essentially it is a regurgitated list of the many anti-marijuana arguments that have been dis proven over the years. In response to this petition, I thought I would write a petition that addresses the points they made, and tries to embody how we the people feel as a whole on the way the government deals with the issue of marijuana. Before I submit it as a petition, I would like to get a number of responses/feedback/criticism. Anything ranging from grammatical errors to structure, any feedback positive or negative is welcome. I realize that I could write hundreds of pages on the things wrong with anti-marijuana arguments, but the goal is to shorten this response to make it a reasonable read for the average petition signer, and make it as straightforward as possible to try to elicit a legitimate response from the government. Here is my rough draft: We the people demand a legitimate response to the petitions for the legalization and regulation of Marijuana. Any reasonably educated citizen is easily able to discern the lies presented in your previous response to the petitions, which are nothing more than a restatement of previous anti-drug arguments; all of which have been proven wrong by objective research. First, we would like to take a moment to repudiate the points made in your response. - "Marijuana use is associated with addiction, respiratory disease, and cognitive impairment." \tFirst, it is necessary to point out the ambiguity in this response. Association, or better known as correlation, does not imply causation. This argument is fundamentally flawed; It essentially argues that it should be illegal because it is bad for you, while it does not address quantitatively HOW bad it is for you. This argument, if true, could be used to make many things illegal. Cheeseburgers, desserts, cigarettes, and alcohol are bad for you as well, should we criminalize them as well? - "Marijuana use is a significant source for voluntary drug treatment admissions." \tWhile this may be true, it is again very misleading. When you are caught by a form of law enforcement for possession of marijuana, you are given two options: You may receive jail time, or you may voluntarily admit to a drug treatment center, so the vast majority of people are not truly there "voluntarily." - "marijuana potency has almost tripled over the past 20 years." \tThe actual increase is approximately double, however that is irrelevant to the point. The vast majority of the negative effects of marijuana come from the act of combustion, and it follows that an increase in potency requires less combustion to achieve the desired effects. Consider the example of alcohol; Simply because there concentrations of alcohol as high as 190-proof (95% alcohol) compared to a typical beer which ranges from 4-6% does not make it a different drug; it requires less of the substance to achieve the same level of intoxication. - "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." \tNever mind that this petition said nothing about the medicinal qualities of marijuana, this cleverly worded response conveniently leaves out the many situations in which there is documented proof that marijuana can be useful as a medication. Second, it does not acknowledge that there are numerous alternatives to smoking marijuana. - "I recognize that we are not going to arrest our way out of the problem." \tThis is quite a statement of hypocrisy, as the Unites States incarcerates it's own citizens at a rate higher than any other country in the world, with approximately 25% of all federal prisoners incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses. If this is how the Federal Government feels on this issue, we would like to see some action taken to reduce the number of drug related incarcerations. - "We also recognize that legalizing marijuana would not provide the answer to ... drug use." \tNote how there is are no sources listed for this claim. Multiple countries have attempted to solve their drug problems through legalization and regulation. Portugal's legalization of personal use and Switzerland's attempt to combat it's heroin problem to name a few, and all have seen success. - "This last fiscal year alone, the Federal Government spent ... just over 9$ billion on drug related law enforcement in the U.S." \tThe actual numbers can be seen here: Drug War Clock | DrugSense , Office of National Drug Control Policy | The White House . The number for Federal Government money spent on the drug war last year, 2010, is approximately 15$ billion, never mind that this number doesn't include State funds, which are a majority of the funds used in the war on drugs. The total number for the war on drugs is hard to quantify for a number of reasons, but is likely in the trillions when you include the costs of our prison infrastructure, law enforcement, treatment facilities, and loss of possible revenue due to potential taxation, with the result being an overall increase in percentage of Americans that choose to use recreational drugs since the drug war began. A monumental failure to say the least. \tThis policy of intentionally disseminating misleading information in order to achieve the goal of a "war on drugs," leads to a widespread problem in the United States. If the government lies to us about the this, what else is it lying to us about? This sort of policy leads to general distrust of the current government. \tIn conclusion we the people wish to know why marijuana remains illegal. In the United States approximately 440,000 deaths per year are attributed to cigarette use, ranking it as the leading cause of preventable death. This is followed by obesity, which kills around 112,000 every year, and then alcohol with around 85,000 per year. That number for marijuana is 0. It is well documented that both alcohol and cigarettes are significantly worse for you than marijuana. If the true cause for the war against marijuana is the widely refuted health effects that the Federal Government claims, then it would follow that the same administration would be in favor of criminalizing use of alcohol and tobacco. If this is not the case then the government must be in favor of legalization of marijuana. Any other response or attempt to ignore both the people's will and the rationale of the criminalization of marijuana is taken to be complete hypocrisy on the part of the Federal Government, and contributing to the general public's distrust of our government.