An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that President Obama chose to ignore marijuana reform questions. The questions posed to him were selected by YouTube, which decided not to present the highest ranked questions to the president. This post has been changed to correct that inaccuracy.

YouTube’s CitizenTube forum concluded today with questions about ending marijuana prohibition receiving the most votes, by far. Yet, the questions about marijuana prohibition were not presented to the president this afternoon.

Last year, when marijuana reform questions topped the “Open For Questions” forum operated by the White House, the president did answer them — albeit without serious consideration to the issue. It’s unfortunate that YouTube would shelter the president from something that’s obviously on a lot of people’s minds.

Ending marijuana prohibition is not a fringe issue. Not anymore. The polls are showing rapid increases in support for reform nationwide (46% of Americans think small amounts of marijuana should be legal, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll), and at least three states are considering legislation or ballot initiatives to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol in the coming years. This issue will be addressed in a serious way, and it’s regrettable that YouTube would shy away from it.

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President Obama released his budget requests for fiscal 2011 today, requesting $3.5 million less for the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign than he did in fiscal 2010.

The media campaign, which is run by the drug czar’s office, has for years emptied its coffers on absurd anti-marijuana advertisements that veer so far from the truth they’re laughable. Take, for example, this ad, which insinuates that marijuana use can lead to rape. This is a particularly dishonest approach considering that alcohol, a legal drug, is a factor in a huge majority of sexual assaults. Yet no one at the drug czar’s office will say publicly that we should put responsible drinkers in jail.

The president spoke of tightening the belt in Washington, D.C. during the State of the Union address last week. He missed an opportunity today to cut $45 million (the current budget for the media campaign) that’s being wasted on ineffective advertising. The media campaign has never been anything but reefer madness, and the new administration should simply eliminate it. If you agree, you can e-mail the White House and let the president know how you feel.

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President Obama has created a YouTube channel where anyone with an Internet connection and an idea can hold an “exclusive interview with the president.” The project is called CitizenTube, and it is very similar to the Open For Questions forum the Obama team unveiled one year ago. And just like last year, marijuana reform questions are by far the most popular.

Here is MPP’s entry:

You can visit the site to vote and help our question be one of the few chosen by Obama for a live YouTube event next week. Click here to help us demonstrate the importance and popularity of this issue.

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President Obama has nominated the acting head of the DEA, Michele Leonhart, to take on the post permanently. We have been generally happy with the Justice Department during Obama’s freshman year, but it would be nice to see a new face at the DEA. Here’s why.

Early in Leonhart’s career, she was the Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles Field Division, where she oversaw President George W. Bush’s brutal tactic of raiding and arresting medical marijuana patients. Most readers will remember the raids on dispensaries that were part of the former president’s war on drugs until 2009, but during the early years of the Bush administration, these raids were directed at individual patients, not just distributors. This show of force was a political message meant to undermine state medical marijuana laws. Bush was so smitten with Leonhart’s work fighting innocent cancer patients that he promoted her to deputy director in 2003.

In that role, Leonhart rejected the application of Professor Lyle Craker of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst to research marijuana’s medical value. Professor Craker was proposing the kind of project considered essential if marijuana is ever to be licensed by the FDA as a prescription medicine, and a DEA administrative law judge ruled in Craker’s favor. Leonhart, however, ignored the judge’s ruling and denied the application. Her reasons were transparently phony: an ideological opposition to medical marijuana dressed up in pseudoscientific language. This is precisely the sort of nonsense Obama has pledged to end.

At a news conference in April, Michele Leonhart said that legalizing drugs “would be a failed law enforcement strategy for both the U.S. and Mexico.” That’s certainly not change I can believe in.

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Last night, Scott Brown (R-Mass.) beat Democrat Martha Coakley in a special election to replace the late Senator Ted Kennedy, becoming the first Republican to hold a Senate seat in Massachusetts since the 1970s. So what happened up there?

To state it simply, the Democrats chose a bad candidate. They backed one of the most vocal and public opponents of the MPP-funded ballot initiative, Question 2, which decriminalized marijuana possession in Massachusetts in 2008. Question 2 was more popular than President Obama on Election Day, garnering 65% of the vote compared with the president’s 62%. All but three towns in the state supported the initiative.

There is a lesson here for Democrats and Republicans alike: Support for marijuana reform will help, not hurt, a candidate in elections. Public support is surging forward. Polls on legalization are moving quickly toward majority approval nationwide — in the west, it’s already passed the 50% mark — and medical marijuana enjoys 81% support. Politicians on both sides of the aisle must recognize that it’s time to use this populist platform as a tool for winning elections.

Scott Brown is not a card-carrying member of the marijuana reform movement by any stretch of the imagination. As a state senator, he proposed that possession of marijuana in a vehicle remain a criminal offense, attempting to pull back parts of Question 2. But Brown was not a leading opponent of the measure nor was he publicly associated with the issue, as Coakley was. The lesson here, however, is of the could have should have variety: Democrats could have backed a candidate that supported Question 2, and they should have used marijuana reform as a tool in the campaign. Had they, today’s election results may have looked a lot different.

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