We the People is a section of the whitehouse.gov

Whitehouse.gov

Whitehouse.gov is the official website of the White House and is owned by the United States government. Launched in October 1994, it contains general American history information, as well as current news pertaining to the President, press briefings, proclamations, executive orders, and any speeches...

 website, launched September 22, 2011, for petitioning the current administration's policy experts. Petitions that meet a certain threshold of signatures will be reviewed by officials in the Administration and an official response will be issued.

Thresholds

Currently a petition must reach 150 signatures within 30 days to be searchable on whitehouse.gov. To receive a response a petition must reach 25,000 signatures within 30 days. The original threshold was set at 5,000 signatures, and was raised to 25,000 on Oct 3, 2011.

Criticism

Concerns about the efficacy of We the People have been raised since before the first White House responses were published.

Criticism of the published responses range from condemnation as boilerplate and non-responsive, from an administration seeming to try to connect to the people and those issues which do not receive the same level of media attention, to outright false and oblivious to the actual question asked in the petition.

Some criticism has been directed at the choice of administration official to answer the petitions regarding the legalization of marijuana. Gil Kerlikowske

Gil Kerlikowske

Richard Gil Kerlikowske is the current Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a position generally referred to as the United States "Drug Czar". He assumed office on May 7, 2009....

, the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy

Office of National Drug Control Policy

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy , a former cabinet level component of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, was established in 1989 by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988...

, was chosen to craft the administrations response. The criticism stems from the Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 1998 which states that the Director must oppose all attempts to legalize the use of illicit drugs in any form. ref name="redbook.gao.gov1">http://redbook.gao.gov/17/fl0083064.php redbook.gao.gov, Application of Anti-Lobbying Laws to the Office of National Drug Control Policy's Open Letter to State Level Prosecutors, B-301022, March 10, 2004, Anthony H. Gamboa

Other discussions of We The People have focused on its technical glitches, democratic rationale, and political dilemmas.