Pubdate: Wed, 13 Aug 2014
Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2014 Canoe Limited Partnership
Contact: http://www.torontosun.com/letter-to-editor
Website: http://torontosun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/457
Author: Kate Dubinski
Page: 3

PRINCE OF POT RETURNS

Emery Must 'Adapt' To Wife's Years of Advocacy

WINDSOR, Ont. - The world Marc Emery left in 2010 is very different 
than the one he came home to on Tuesday.

Yes, marijuana has been legalized in several American states while 
the pot activist sat in U.S. federal prison for selling cannabis 
seeds from his Vancouver business.

Canadian law has changed, too, with medical marijuana dispensaries 
dotting the streets of major cities, including on the very block 
he'll go home to when the self-proclaimed Prince of Pot and his wife 
return to B.C. later this week.

But perhaps the biggest shock Marc Emery is in for is a personal one.

When he was extradited to serve his American sentence, his wife Jodie 
Emery was learning how to run the couple's store, maybe prepared to 
do some media interviews while her husband - the public face of the 
pot legalization movement in Canada - served his time.

Now, the tables have turned.

It's Jodie Emery who's the public face of pot reform, and is seeking 
the Liberal nomination in Vancouver East.

It's Jodie Emery who has tried to make sure everyone knows the Emerys 
support Justin Trudeau and his federal Liberal party, the only major 
party to publicly support pot legalization.

It's Marc Emery - a self-described egomaniac - who has become a 
political liability to the movement.

His welcome back to Canada on Tuesday was jovial, with more than 100 
pot activists greeting him as he stepped out of the customs building 
in Windsor after a 12-hour day in shackles. He'd travelled by plane, 
then van, from a detention centre in Louisiana.

In the lead up to her husband's release, Jodie Emery was fielding the 
questions, doing live interviews, tweeting and touting the Liberal 
party as the only option for Canadians wanting pot legalized.

But as Marc Emery spoke for two hours just after 4 p.m. Tuesday, 
Jodie Emery took a backseat, standing slightly to the side of the 
podium, handing her husband bottled water as he called Prime Minister 
Stephen Harper a "tyrant," an "evil man" and a "Machiavellian manipulator."

That's going to have to change, even Marc Emery admitted, saying his 
wife, once his "protege," has had 4 1/2 years "to come out of (his) shadow."

"She's had time to establish that, and now it's up to me to adapt to 
that. I have to be there to tell people, especially young people, to 
go out and vote."

Instead of advocating civil disobedience, including smoking gigantic 
joints on the steps of police stations, the Emerys have decided to 
try to help get marijuana legalized by working within the system 
that's thrown Marc in jail so many times.

But that mainstream political system doesn't look kindly on convicted 
felons, so the burden rests with Jodie.

"Civil disobedience has worked in the past but it won't work now," 
Marc Emery said Tuesday.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom