Pubdate: Sun, 07 Aug 2005 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Copyright: 2005 The Toronto Star Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456 Author: Albert Nerenberg Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization) A PRINCE TAKES ON BUSH'S AMERICA Marc Emery May Be A Pothead, But He's OUR Pothead Marc Emery never leaves Canada. He worries that if he did the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) would grab him and sock him away forever, or worse. "I haven't left Canada in seven years," he told me in an interview about a year ago across the street from his headquarters on the Pot Block on Vancouver's East Side. "Even if I went to other countries, the United States would have me picked up on a warrant. There's no security unless you're in your home country." As long as your home country isn't Canada. Two Fridays ago, police in Nova Scotia arrested Emery at the request of the Seattle division of the DEA. He now faces extradition to Washington. The DEA wants to charge him with conspiracy to manufacture marijuana, conspiracy to distribute marijuana seeds and conspiracy to engage in money laundering. But for Emery it gets worse. "It's quite possible that with my admission in various media," he said in that interview a year ago, "of having sold millions of seeds in the United States would be used as evidence." In a press conference announcing Emery's arrest, the DEA did exactly that. They used information straight off his website as evidence and reminded people that Emery calls himself the "Prince of Pot," as if to say What more proof do you need? But it gets still worse. "In the United States, I would likely face the death penalty, there's no question," he said. "Over 600,000 seeds, you're a drug kingpin, and that's death." Jeff Sullivan, chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney's office, suggested that Emery faces life imprisonment, but that might have been strategic: under Washington state law, a drug kingpin conviction can bring the death penalty, and Canada has resisted extradition for prisoners facing that possibility. It's clear that Emery, a former bookstore owner from London, Ont., has been playing with thermonuclear fire. Why would a man who has so much going for him live so dangerously? The answer is awkwardly simple: because he believes he's right and they're wrong. Emery lives in the first country in the world to legalize medical marijuana (yes, Canada did so in 2001, oddly a little known fact). And Canada is where the government has done not one but two major investigations into marijuana, both times coming to the same conclusion -- there is no rational basis to the criminalization of the plant. In short, unlike in the U.S., in Canada being the Prince of Pot is not necessarily a bad thing. As Darth Vader might say, it was thus Emery's destiny to confront America's Drug War. He has no choice. Emery leads a burgeoning international subculture of people who smoke pot, grow pot and use pot medically. That industry is increasingly on a collision course with Bush's America, which recently re-declared marijuana to be its drug enemy Number 1. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth