| Jodie Emery |
| Jodie Emery and her imprisoned husband Marc at Yazoo City Medium Security Prison in Mississippi, July 4, 2011 |
More than 5,000 people have signed an official White House petition for President Obama to pardon Canadian “Prince of Pot” Marc Emery, who is serving a five-year federal prison term in the United States.
The White House recently launched its “We The People” website for Americans to submit petitions on any issue. The Obama Administration initially set the threshold at 5,000 signatures within 30 days in order to get a formal response.
After overwhelming response, including numerous petitions to legalize cannabis, the White House announced on October 3 that it was upping the threshold fivefold to 25,000 signatures, but said that petitions which had already gotten 5,000 or more signatures before the announcement would still be included.
The official White House website called it “a good problem to have.”
“Planning for the new We the People platform, we were confident the system would ultimately get a lot of use, but we expected it would take a little longer to get out into the ether and pick up speed,” reads an October 3 post by Macon Phillips on whitehouse.gov.
“Let’s just say our estimates were … ahem … a wee bit on the low side!” Phillips writes.
| Jeremiah Vandermeer/Cannabis Culture |
| Jodie Emery: “Marc is a political prisoner stolen from his home country” |
According to the White House, the change only affects petitions created from October 3 forward.
The petition to pardon Emery, started on September 23, made the 5,000 threshold in just nine days, on October 2, so it qualifies to get an official response from President Obama.
“Marc is a political prisoner stolen from his home country for the crime of financing cannabis activism in the USA and Canada through selling seeds,” Marc’s wife Jodie said.
“There was widespread opposition to his extradition in the first place, and now we’re demonstrating that thousands of people want Marc to be freed and sent home to Canada,” Jodie said.
“I’m elated over getting 5,000+ signatures in nine days,” Marc wrote to Jodie.
Marc is currently in the federal Yazoo City Medium Security Prison in Mississippi, and has just under three years left to serve on his sentence until his early release date of July 9, 2014.
You can sign the White House petition to pardon Marc Emery by clicking here.
