UPDATE I below...

The Obama administration, to its credit, keeps a section on the White House's web site (called "We the People") through which citizens can directly petition the administration. Any time a petition receives enough signatures, the administration promises a response. 

Amusingly, and encouragingly, the most popular topic on the petition site is marijuana legalization. Eight different petitions call for it in some way. One petition entitled "Legalize and Regulate Marijuana in a Manner Similar to Alcohol" has just under 75,000 signatures on it. Now that the administration has responded to the marijuana petitions, they are no longer active. By comparison, the most-signed still-active petition on the website (calling for an end to puppy mills) has around 30,000 signatures as of October 29, 2011.

The Administration, of course, has taken zero steps towards marijuana legalization. Unsurprisingly, their reply, penned by Gil Kerlikowske, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, was fairly articulate defense of this inaction. It was also a complete dodge.

The reply grounded its logic on the negative health effects of pot:

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.

I do not know exactly how reliable their assessments of the health effects of pot are. I'm willing to accept the statements. Of course, they have nothing to do with the rationale for legalization of marijuana. The rationale does not, and should not, rest on pot's status as some benign drug. Unless the Administration wants to start moving in the direction of prohibition of cigarettes, alcohol, and many kinds of junk food, the health effects of pot are completely peripheral to the debate. The administration even acknowledges "we are not going to arrest our way out of the problem."  

Education and treatment are well-known to be the most effective anti-drug programs. This the administration also acknowledges in its reply. But still no action towards legalization, on the grounds that weed is unhealthy and keeping it illegal protects our children (all the way up into their 20's). Apparently locking people up and helping them establish a criminal record, which can disqualify them for jobs and for things like financial aid for education, somehow doesn't undermine their well-being.

Prohibition is well known to be ineffective in deterring consumption of a desired product. The drug war is well known to be a waste of government resources, an Associated Press report released this past summer stating that it has cost $1 trillion and failed to meet all its goals over the last 40 years. It's also well-known to have detrimental effects on non-violent citizens deemed criminal doing nothing but making their own decisions about what they want to consume. The black market drug trade is a notoriously violent affair. 

It would be extremely irrational to hope that the Administration would establish this top-down form of democratic expression and then allow it to seriously challenge them on any policy. It seems like one more demonstration that the Obama brand is more interested in the superficial appearance of people's power than in the actual empowerment of people. Big ten gallon hat, no cattle. 

It is heartening that the cause of marijuana legalization drew the attention it did. I have often heard it said that positive social change has historically been really about critical masses of small victories. Having the White House establish this feedback conduit and seeing it used to promote a cause that challenges administration policy, showing the administration that the people paying attention to Obama enough to engage in one of his superficial initiatives are not all simply in the business of feeding him easy causes to champion (such as ending puppy mills), is hopefully one such small victory.

UPDATE I

NORML, unsurprisingly, thoroughly dismantled the logic of the Obama admin's reply.