(RNN) - Of course it was.
When the ability to petition the government through the White House's official website went live Thursday, the first petition to go public was for the legalization of marijuana.
In a single day, more than 18,000 signatures were received on a petition to legalize the banned substance and regulate it similarly to alcohol.
We the People was launched on www.whitehouse.gov, giving users the ability to sign up and submit petitions for the public to vote on.
Petitions with at least 5,000 signatures in 30 days will be looked at by administration officials, and will receive a response by an official. Some may even be addressed by the president.
So far, marijuana legalization looks to be the hottest topic on the site, and according to the 420 Times, it was the first petition to go public.
But it was by no means the only petition making waves.
In the span of a single day, thousands of signatures had been received on more than 25 petitions available to the public.
More than 1,500 signatures poured in during a single hour to abolish the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), largely in part thanks to social media sites like reddit.
In order to create or sign a petition, you have to create an account on whitehouse.gov that requires your name, email and zip code. Anyone 13 years of age or older can participate.
Before a petition can be open to the public on the site, it has to receive 150 signatures. Submitters can get these by spreading the URL of the petition they create to their friends and family through social media or email.
When you sign a petition, your signature number, name, city and state will appear on the petition.
For now, the threshold for administration officials to consider a petition is 5,000 signatures, but they expect that number to rise.
Macon Phillips, the director of new media for the White House, tweeted that the threshold will depend on their workload and their ability to meaningfully respond to each petition that makes it.
"It's sort of a chicken & egg, b/c it's unclear how many on average will make it about the current threshold," he said via Twitter.
If the threshold is increased, it will not affect petitions created before it was raised.
In the mean time, the site seems to be going viral with an increasing rate of signatures every hour it stays up. If you're interested in checking it out, expect some delays for now - the website has been experiencing frequent down times and slow loading pages.
Copyright 2011 Raycom News Network. All rights reserved.
All content © Copyright 2000 - 2012 WorldNow and KLTV, a Raycom Media Station.
