Pubdate: Sun, 17 Aug 2014
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2014 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Todd Coyne
Page: A3
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?196 (Emery, Marc)

OUT OF THE JOINT, AND RIGHT BACK INTO IT

Marijuana Crusader Says Time Served in a U.S. Prison Has Only 
Hardened His Resolve

Not 24 hours after he was released from U.S. jail and frogmarched 
across the Detroit-Windsor border in handcuffs, Canada's "Prince of 
Pot" Marc Emery was in Toronto joshing with international media, 
vowing revenge on the prime minister, organizing a nationwide "smoke 
out" and reaffirming the claim he once got high with Liberal Leader 
Justin Trudeau.

That was Wednesday. By Saturday, Emery still hadn't been home yet.

That the 56-year-old marijuana activist is a political hot potato is 
a fact of his long life in the sticky margins of stoner celebrity.

He knows his endorsements - most recently of Trudeau - are not sought 
by serious politicians in Canada. Most would rather downplay or deny 
ever having had a "joint" meeting with the reefer reformer. And Emery 
admits his tendency to self-aggrandize has in the past veered beyond 
bad taste, such as in a decade-old blog post in which he called 
former justice minister Irwin Cotler a "Nazi-Jew" for allowing his 
extradition proceedings to go forward.

But none of that has slowed the London, Ont.-born Emery in his 35 
years of pro-pot activism, alternately supporting the NDP, the Greens 
and now the Liberals.

"They can tell me to shut up," Emery says, when asked about the 
backlash to his new Liberal leanings. "But we are not going to stop 
talking about marijuana legalization."

The we, in this case, includes Emery's legions of legalize-it 
fanatics who stop him on the street for a handshake and a cellphone 
selfie - a perplexing phenomenon for the man who spent the last 4 1/2 
years in jail.

But this time the we also includes his biggest supporter, wife Jodie 
Emery, 29. Every bit the fellow traveller in his cannabis crusade, 
the two met in 2004 and married two years later.

The coming year could see a dramatic role reversal for the pair, 
however, as His Highness takes a back seat - at least on the face of 
it - to his wife's push for the Liberal party nod in the Vancouver 
East riding next year.

In response to the announcement, the Liberals have said little.

"We do not comment publicly about any potential candidates," Liberal 
spokesman Olivier Duchesneau said this week. "We have open 
nominations in every riding and that includes that one, and any 
Canadian can enter that process."

It's hardly an endorsement of the potentially headline-grabbing 
candidate. And it remains to be seen whether Canada's first family of 
weed will turn out the dope vote among its followers, or go bust.

Emery has always believed he is on the right side of history when it 
comes to the marijuana debate. And, after years of toil and two dozen 
trips to jail, he believes he is today more right than ever.

"It's fun to be me," Emery says, taking the stage between two 
Canadian flags at a downtown Toronto vapour lounge. Minutes earlier, 
he marvelled as he spun out of his hotel lobby, "Four and a half 
years since I've seen a revolving door."

Around him, approximately 200 people, mostly young, gather to smoke 
weed and meet the man who helped make this pot-permissible space and 
dozens like it across the country possible.

When Emery was charged with selling marijuana seeds into the U.S. in 
2005 and eventually extradited to Seattle in 2010, the U.S. Drug 
Enforcement Agency hailed his capture as a "significant blow not only 
to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also 
to the legalization movement."

Today, Washington state is peppered with government-certified weed 
dealers and, along with Colorado, the state is seen as a leader in 
the movement to full U.S. legalization.

That's thanks in part to the $4.5 million in seed revenues Emery 
estimates he sent across the border from his Cannabis Culture shop to 
help pay for drug-law challenges between 1995 and 2005.

"Marc's going to be a person - a historical figure - that will be 
remembered and revered by future generations as somebody who made 
real sacrifices to help change these laws," says Emery's best friend 
and former NDP candidate for West Vancouver, Dana Larsen.

"These are things that are going to be, I think, recorded in the 
history books in the future that our children and grandchildren will 
read about - this transformation and how we ended the war on marijuana."

Emery didn't use marijuana in prison, he says. The punishment for 
those who do is often more jail time and that seemed an unworthy sacrifice.

Instead, he taught himself to play the bass guitar and plowed through 
two dozen magazine subscriptions, a daily newspaper and a book a week 
- - most sent to him by Larsen.

"It was a very redemptive and meaningful experience being in prison 
and I hope I always carry the message forward that I saw there that 
it is a very wrong society that punishes people for drugs," he says.

For anyone expecting to get a reformed or humbled Emery back from his 
five-year sentence in the American South, they sorely misjudged him. 
What we got back instead is that common product of North America's 
prisons: a savvier ex-convict with a hardened resolve.

That he remains barred from the U.S. indefinitely is his sorriest 
regret, Emery says.

But with a pair of Canadian tours and a jaunt through Europe already 
planned for next year, the man who once proudly boasted that he 
hadn't "left Canada voluntarily in 20 years," is ramping up his 
global reform efforts like never before.

"There's a sense of the inevitability of it," Emery said Wednesday 
night, posing with strangers for photos between his cab and a Toronto 
head shop where still more media interviews were lined up.

"If there is more marijuana being produced today than yesterday, 
we're winning," he said. "I tell people we never had it so good."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom