Pubdate: Tue, 05 Aug 2014
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2014 Postmedia Network
Contact:  http://www.calgaryherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
Author: Kevin Brooker
Page: A8
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?196 (Emery, Marc)

EMERY'S REEFER REVENGE JUST MIGHT WORK

"Revenge!" Now there's an anguished utterance you normally expect 
only to hear in bad Shakespeare parodies. Not last week, however, 
when Marc Emery, Canada's so-called Prince of Pot, dropped the R-bomb 
on no less than the government itself.

Speaking to CBC Radio from a private deportation facility (whatever 
the heck that is) in anticipation of finally being released from the 
U.S. prison system, Emery said, "My own government betrayed me and 
I'm going to wreak an appropriate amount of political revenge when I 
get home and campaign against the Conservative government."

Emery served nearly five years for the crime of selling seeds, 
"chained and shackled every inch of the way," and obviously he isn't 
about to forgive and forget. But this is no routine - and therefore 
hollow - act of fist-shaking by a jailbird.

His threat is anything but empty. Emery is now poised to re-enter his 
chosen life's work of cannabis activism in the most significant way 
possible, by threatening to turn the next federal election into a 
single-issue referendum on legalizing cannabis. He and his many 
supporters are planning to campaign for the Liberals, and will thus 
hold Justin Trudeau's feet to the fire regarding his pledge to end 
the legal morass that is cannabis prohibition. Emery's team already 
has 30 rallies planned across the country, with surely many more to 
come. His plan is to energize young voters on what will be framed as 
a civil rights cause, irrespective of their personal relationship to cannabis.

The hand-wringers in Ottawa don't know what to make of it. Many 
Liberals suggest Emery might be a liability to the party by 
alienating centrists with his brash rhetoric. The Tories, of course, 
will take every opportunity to disparage him, as they already have, 
as "a drug dealer who just got out of jail."

But as the next few months unfurl, I suspect we will see Emery 
quietly absorbed into the Liberal fold. After all, he's got buckets 
of money, commitment and organization. The prospect of him stumping 
for their brand could do the Liberals a huge favour, whether they 
admit it or not.

If nothing else, Emery will come home with a kind of street gravitas, 
having openly flouted laws on principle, knowing that he would some 
day do jail time, and doing a hard nickel to boot.

One strategist noted that, "Political parties don't as a rule like to 
be associated with controversial figures, especially those who have 
served jail time," though the annals of politics are filled with 
ex-cons. Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel come to mind.

Sure, Emery is no Mandela, but it is not difficult to argue that he 
was in some sense a political prisoner. The Conservative government 
acted vindictively, and politically, by bringing in U.S. drug 
warriors and seeing to it that Emery was renditioned to a place where 
he would serve a far harsher sentence than any Canadian court would 
deliver for such an offence.

Now he has a story to tell, plus an aura of martyrdom vis-a-vis the 
growing number of people who see cannabis prohibition as a colossal 
failure whose social harms far outweigh those of personal abuse. It 
is a tale with which many Canadians will empathize.

Much has changed since Emery's been away. I write today from 
Washington state where, ironically, not far from the court that 
convicted him, any adult can walk into a store and purchase cannabis 
itself, and not merely seeds. Last week, Emery evinced pride that his 
long career of activism helped influence such developments here and 
in Colorado. Likewise, it has changed Canada. In his home province of 
B.C., for example, medical cannabis dispensaries have made the 
substance de facto legal.

The current patchwork of legality with respect to this ancient plant 
is just one more reason why Canadian voters are likely to respond 
positively to some form of blanket decriminalization. And if they do, 
Emery will have his revenge.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom