| 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.