marc emery warns you may be in danger!

[Alfa]

Marc Emery: My message to you
by Marc Emery (11 Aug, 2005)
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Marc writes about how he feels about this extradition case, and reflects on what he has done so far in his activist career. I had that ‘life flashing before me’ moment. The frozen second in time when everything was sharp, clear, and signalled a great convergence of all my effort into this precise moment.

“Marc Emery, you are under arrest for Extradition to The United States of America.”

All my seeds sold, all the millions of dollars I had given to the cause, every speech to free our people, every arrest, jailing and raid I had endured: it was all for this moment in time. “For trafficking in marijuana seeds, for the production of marijuana, and for money laundering”

In 1990, when I became a cannabis activist, all books, magazines, videos, pipes, bongs, everything about even saying the word marijuana was illegal in Canada.

As a bookseller at the City Lights Bookshop in London, Ontario, I was surprised and shocked to learn that the Canadian government had banned High Times Magazine, had police seize all copies of marijuana growing books (including the Canadian classic Grow Yer Own Stone), and had pushed over 500 ‘head’ shops across Canada into shutting down.

There was no cannabis activist movement left. No books, no magazines, no activists, no hemp stores. Nothing.

Into this strange wilderness, I decided that as a bookseller, I had to defy this peculiar law that passed almost unanimously in the Canadian Parliament, with only one lone opponent, NDP Member of Parliament Svend Robinson, in 1987.

In the fall of 1990, I ordered through the mail a few copies of the Emperor Wears No Clothes, the classic book on the suppression of hemp by Jack Herer. Not available in Canada because of the ban (section 462.2 of the Criminal Code provided up to 6 months in jail, and/or up to a $100,000 fine for distributing books and any printed matter about marijuana or any ‘illicit’ drug), I imported copies (illegally) and bought newspaper ads in the London Free Press, my hometown daily, to announce that I was breaking the literature ban on marijuana and welcomed the local police to arrest me.

This approach had always worked well for me in the ten years leading up to this time, as I went to court and jail after deliberately breaking the laws on Sunday shopping, the obscenity laws, and other Canadian social control laws that I personally helped change.





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<TD align=middle>Protesting began immediately</TD></TR></T></T></T></TABLE>


While I was handcuffed and being delivered to the dank cells of the Halifax lock-up, raids by Vancouver police were underway in my home, my offices, and the BCMP Bookstore in Vancouver. No real quantities of drugs or marijuana were found, and in fact really only 5,000 seeds at the most were available to be taken. Up to 50 police officers were used to comb the premises of all the locations. A battering ram was used to force the door at 22 East Cordova Street. Various computers were taken but little else was of interest to police. Warrants specified that any records relating to the seed business were to be seized. Presumably, police have access to phone records to calls made to Marc Emery Seeds. Otherwise, it wasn’t a business where we kept records. We destroyed all information after sending out orders.

In my cell in the Halifax lock-up, I knew that my life had entered a critical and inevitable phase. I have always been very, very transparent in the way I have conducted a career I have often described as ‘revolutionary retail’ or ‘capitalist activism’. From the day I arrived in Vancouver on March 1st 1994, I was going to change the way marijuana activism existed. Even by 1994, everything about cannabis and used to enjoy cannabis was still illegal in Canada, and I was determined to make an aggressive change in this landscape.

Penniless after losing all my money on an ill-advised house building project in Indonesia, I arrived for the first time in my life in Vancouver, British Columbia, determined to build a movement that used a retail model to generate money that would feed a vast network of activism. Within days of getting off the plane, I was selling High Times Magazine and a variety of banned marijuana grow books that had been fronted to me by a distributor. I sold door-to-door, to strangers on the street, to magazine stores, to book stores, to students. I would make on average $1 profit per item, and fortunately, after 6 years of non-availability, there was a pent-up demand in this new place.

My children, spouse and I lived on $20 a day for food, and all other money was put back into these books and magazines. Within one year, I was distributing 2,000 copies a month of High Times magazine and was wholesaling and mail order retailing over 40 books about marijuana and other ‘illicit’ entheogens. After selling these products on the street for 3 months, a former Communist book shop that had been subject of a firebombing was available to me for $500 first month’s rent, and as long as I cleaned the heavily damaged building up, the landlord said my ‘Hemp revolution business’, as I explained it to him, was fine.

On July 7, 1994, I opened the HEMP BC retail store and began a decade of principled, purposeful lawbreaking, every action aimed at ending the marijuana prohibition by any peaceful means possible.

While the police were raiding the various places they believed seeds and records were stored, activists like David Malmo-Levine and brave others protested the attack with street protests. The media, who were informed immediately by Chris Bennett and the Cannabis Culture magazine team, descended on the scene at BCMP Headquarters. Within hours everyone in British Columbia was bombarded in the media with the news that the US government was seeking to extradite myself and two friends back to the USA for my seed selling ways. It was clear the potential penalties were severe if I were to be extradited and prosecuted in the US, probably a life imprisonment. Under Drug Kingpin legislation, selling over 60,000 seeds qualifies for the death penalty in the United States. The manufacture or distribution of 60,000 kilograms of marijuana, 60,000 plants or 60,000 seeds all are included in death penalty provisions of the medieval law passed by a Newt Gingrich congress. I would be the first person under this recent law who could qualify to be executed for the activity I have clearly done with the tacit approval of everyone in Canada.

Revenue Canada received $578,000 in personal income taxes (1999 to 2005) on income that was explicitly from the sale of marijuana seeds, and they ALWAYS were aware of it. It said “Marijuana Seed Vendor” on my tax returns. I explained my entire banking and money systems and always gave income tax all access to my accounts so they could verify everything I said was true. I told them the Money Mart location where I cashed money orders; my bank accounts were explained so they could track the flow of money. I explained how expenses and disbursements worked in the incriminating world of seeds. They knew how it all worked because I had nothing to hide. The government of Canada received about $378,000 of this money; the provincial government of British Columbia received about $200,000.

As to politicians, every Member of Parliament in Canada, all 305, had a free subscription to our magazine, which often their assistants read and perused if not the Member themselves, for eight years. My seed catalogue was in every issue. They knew it was there. None ever complained to me or the police about it. Former MP Svend Robinson has said that when he was NDP Health Critic and he asked Health Canada where medical cannabis people were supposed to obtain seeds, “Health Canada said to go to the internet and buy seeds there.” And that’s what he told them to do: buy seeds on the internet. In fact, that’s what Health Canada told others also in letters that we have from Health Canada in 2003.

NDP leader Jack Layton came to my home 18 months ago and did a beautiful interview on POT-TV. I think Jack Layton is a wonderful guy. I think NDP Justice Critic Libby Davies has done a sterling job. If I had any kind of reputation as a ‘drug dealer’, do you think a man who is a serious contender for Prime Minister (as Jack Layton now exceeds Paul Martin or Stephen Harper in polls measuring trustworthiness and competence) is going to some drug dealer’s house to publicly ask for support?





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<TD align=middle>The BCMP search warrant</TD></TR></T></T></T></TABLE>


I was asked to testify before the Senate Subcommittee in both 1996 and 2002 as to my views on legalizing marijuana. Do you think they would ask any known drug dealer to attend?

When the Wall Street Journal put me on the front page of its massively influential newspaper in a very favourable article ten years ago on Dec. 10, 1995, Quentin Hardy, the journalist who wrote it, told me six editors were assigned to check out my background. “They talked to your teachers, your neighbours, business associates, your parents. They are NOT going to let anyone with even a whiff of ‘drug dealer’ appear on that front page.” Nine years later, Mr. Hardy came to British Columbia and wrote the definitive piece on the British Columbia marijuana industry for Forbes Magazine, and I personally introduced him to many in the industry while he did that piece.

I spoke at IDEA CITY in 2001 and 2003. I spoke on the same stage at former Prime Ministers John Turner and Kim Campbell, and I was the marijuana provider to many famous Canadians at the Friday Night IDEA CITY Party at MUCH MUSIC/CHUM TV. In my speeches I talked about the incredible work in helping 18 year old Webster Alexander in Alabama, having his sentence for selling two ounces of pot reduced from an unbelievable 36 years to one year served on weekends. I talked about the amazing work at my Iboga Therapy House, with heavily drug addicted persons and the amazing results we had. I talked about my mission in life and how I had developed this ‘seed thing’ that paid for immense amounts of activism.

<IMAGE9>My very transparent manifesto, “How to Overgrow the Government through revolutionary retail” was known to every journalist in Canada. I was written up and covered in TIME Magazine (Canada, USA, worldwide), MacLean’s Magazine (Canada), The Economist (Worldwide), CNN, Mexico’s La Reforma, The Times of India, and hundreds of other publications world-wide. I never received one letter from ANYONE in 10 years asking me to stop selling seeds. No one on the streets of Vancouver or anywhere in Canada where I have spoken extensively (22 cities in 2003, 19 cities in 2004) has ever approached me and said “I don’t like what you are doing by selling seeds”. I have never received, as far as I can recall, a letter or a phone call or correspondence of any kind from anyone in Canada asking or demanding that I stop the sale and distribution of seeds.

In my time in British Columbia (over 11 years now), I never owned a car, any property, bonds, investments, assets, offshore accounts. Nothing but the things necessary to produce information or revenue for our beloved cause. I leased everything on a month-by-month basis. If I had money stashed, the police or Income Tax people would have found it. I was watched extensively. I presumed my cell phone was always monitored. When the DEA undercover agent tried to get me to sell her ten pounds of pot over the phone, I refused and told her that I always assumed my cell phone was monitored, so how could she be so foolish and naïve. When she asked again at a later time, I lectured her at length. Not only did I not sell pot, but she was very foolish to even think about importing pot to the USA.





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<TD align=middle>Marc during the May 2005 election</TD></TR></T></T></T></TABLE>


The DEA even has a subscription to Cannabis Culture, with their money orders on US Department of Justice stationery. I figured if the US government was that pissed off, they’d just ask the Vancouver Police to raid me like in the 1996 to 1998 period. I was always raided after appearing in A-list US media. A month after the Wall Street Journal: raided. A month after Rolling Stone: raided. Two months after the CNN special (CNN Visits Canada’s Prince of Pot): raided. The police took a million dollars in store and business assets in total, but I was not even charged on two occasions, and received small fines from the courts when I was charged on two others. The last fine I got for selling seeds in 1998 was $2,000. From $2,000 in 1998, to life imprisonment without parole or the death penalty in 2005... that’s a fantastic contrast.

A lot of good was accomplished through all of that struggle, trial and tribulation. In 1994, there were no hemp stores, no activist activity, no medical marijuana program, no pot retail industry, not even legally obtained books and magazines about marijuana in Canada. Now, eleven years later there are over 75 hemp activist stores, literature and magazines were made legal, medical marijuana is legal, the hemp industry is in a revival. Marijuana legalization and the drug war have been discussed in the Canadian media every day for the past ten years. Regulations continue to improve for Canada’s medical cannabis program.

Phillip Owen, a former Mayor of Vancouver (1993 to 2001) was at one time in office a very vocal prohibitionist. He denounced me in the New York Times. But by the end of his third term, he became a brilliant and articulate anti-prohibitionist. He met with the US Drug Czar John Walters and said “It was the most intense meeting of my life. There is no one more uninformed about drugs than a drug Czar.”

Current Mayor, and newly appointed Senator, Larry Campbell was my rival for Mayor in the Vancouver 2002 election. I got to speak about legalization on over 15 occasions in his presence. He was elected. He spoke at the Beyond Prohibition 2004 Conference in which a grant from Marc Emery Direct Seed proceeds went to the BC Civil Liberties Association ($18,000) to produce the conference where Mr. Campbell famously and momentously announced that marijuana should legalized, taxed and regulated, and that prohibition should end.

I participated in elections in 1996 (Mayor of Vancouver); 2000 (Canadian Marijuana Party, federal election); 2001 (BC Marijuana Party, provincial election); 2002 (Mayor of Vancouver); 2005 (BC Marijuana Party, provincial election). Only a few months ago, I was invited to a fundraiser by Tim Stevenson, who is on Vancouver City Council. During the recent 2005 provincial election he unfortunately lost his bid for MLA by 11 votes. But he had introduced me proudly to his supporters and said “Marc is here to lend his support because he knows I believe in legalization.” And I did not run against him in that riding because Tim is a good man; but again, do you think if there was any taint anywhere in my life that these people would introduce me to crowds of key supporters?





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<TD align=middle>Marc doing what he does best</TD></TR></T></T></T></TABLE>


Adriane Carr is leader of the BC Green Party. In 2002, the BC Greens launched a petition drive to get proportional representation on the ballot as a people’s initiative. The BC Greens didn’t have the money, I believed in the cause, so I gave Adrianne Carr $8,000 personally to finance the petition drive. That was seed money. I’ve never had any other source of income.

I never met a person, government, government agency, politician, tax department, or any charitable or non-governmental agency who ever refused any money from me, even though I was world famous as a marijuana seed seller. Banks opened accounts and issued credit cards, and I was honest and candid with every last one of them.

Over 10 years, I gave $4,000,000 Canadian to activist organizations, activist politicians, ballot initiatives throughout the United States, referendums, court challenges, Supreme Court of Canada challenges, refugees, bail costs, legal defence funds, political parties, individuals, drug addiction clinics, media, medical bills for activists (Terence McKenna, Jack Herer), Compassion Clubs (legal bills and start-up money), Hemp fests, conferences, Global Marijuana Marches (2000 to 2005), full page ads in Canadian newspapers, HEMP BC Legal Assistance Centre... and the list goes on. It’s an extraordinary record of unparalleled distribution of the proceeds from our beloved plant.

And I never met anyone who complained. Even that last judge who fined me in 1999 for that 1998 seed charge gave a nice speech on my behalf, decrying the drug war.

Overgrow the Government. Absolutely right. Inherent in that beautiful phrase are so many ideals and glories of a co-operative, peaceful society. Plant the seeds of freedom. Not overthrow, which speaks of violent conflict. But overgrow, using God’s greatest plant, and the enlightenment that comes from ingesting marijuana, to further a peaceful, democratic, revolution based on tolerance and peace and unity of all peoples. Plants, not violence. Reason, not murderous incarceration. Personal freedom, not the Nazified paramilitary violence of the DEA.

I am being punished for my success. I have achieved much in my eleven years, but clearly now, the enemy, the very dark and powerful forces emanating from the White House believe they have the upper hand. That they have stopped our revolution. That this is the time when the Bush-Walters White House is making the most aggressive attack on our culture ever, and I don’t mean just on me. The current Rolling Stone talks of the Bush White House and the DEA arresting more Americans than ever before for marijuana, and pursuing us with a frenzy not yet seen in history.

My wonderful friend Mike Smith last March 2004 received a 30 year sentence in an Oklahoma federal prison for growing 200 plants. He had already spent six years on a previous cultivation offence. His wife, Yvonne Toy, received a 15 year sentence, her first offence ever, for those same 200 plants.

Not comprehensible to the sensitive, rational mind. Why would beautiful people like Yvonne and Mike be given medieval torture like that over marijuana? Why would the taxpayers of America spend a million dollars to make them miserable in a cold unloving and dangerous federal prison? This is madness.

And so this is my request, this is a challenge. Help me cope through this very difficult period ahead. You know I will try to speak on behalf of our culture with passion, reason and good values. In the months ahead, I will be interviewed extensively, and I hope I am a spokesman and activist and leader you can be proud of.

Now I live at your pleasure. Any money I use to live on will be charitable donations from people like you. Pot-TV, CC Magazine, the BCMP: they cannot be giving me money. I returned my rented car, moved into a small affordable apartment, and am selling my furnishings. I work every day and have no leisure time.

If you believe that this record of service to our culture merits your support, then I will tell you that we can use your support.





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As you know, I am not afraid of jail, I am not afraid to die. But I do not want to see Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams get extradited. Michelle Rainey is the most selfless activist I have ever known. A fantastic woman who daily suffers with Crohns Disease, needs marijuana to control her very damaged and disabled organs, yet has helped hundreds, if not thousands of people with her unrelenting effort to make marijuana legal. Michelle has been my greatest ally in this struggle, and she surely should be nominated for Sainthood. She is so worthy of your support. She MUST NOT be extradited to a US jail. She will die in horrible pain there. My American friends, and my Canadian friends, this cannot be permitted to happen. A terrible injustice will have occurred if Michelle Rainey exists in pain and torture in an American jail. There will terrible karma in the world if one of God’s most beautiful souls is allowed to be destroyed by apathy and cowardice in this, her most critical time of need. The people can save her from extradition, if they speak out to the Canadian Minister of Justice. Speak to power, my friends, her life depends on it.

Greg Williams, aka Marijuana Man, is a fine and wonderful man who brought knowledge, joy and good feelings to everyone he met. He is being punished for being a good friend to me and the movement; he did what hundreds of us do every day in Canada, which is to help people find the cannabis products they are looking for.

Marijuana is a 7 to 15 billion dollar industry in Canada, where hundreds of thousands of us, perhaps half a million people, are growing marijuana, and selling marijuana. Millions and millions of Canadians and Americans consume this marijuana. Canadian growers, dealers, and seed sellers deal with Americans every day. Now we could all be extradited, because if you have any minor connection to any marijuana transaction that leads to the USA, you are liable to be considered party to a conspiracy to import marijuana into the United States. That’s certainly bringing the US drug war into Canada in an incredible and dangerous way. Everyone in the cannabis culture in Canada is now at much greater risk by this precedent set.

Yet Canadians don’t want this barbaric drug war. In the 10 years of our activism, Canadians now overwhelmingly reject fines, jail time or any sanction as an option for marijuana possession, according to a Nov. 2004 Nation-wide SES poll (which our seed money paid for). A majority of Canadians favour a tax and regulated way of distributing marijuana.

While Canada pursues an independent approach to cannabis laws and prohibition, away from the US drug war model, there is hope for both Canadians and Americans of the cannabis culture. If Canada becomes prohibition free, then American prohibition will fall. But if the United States government is allowed to triumph with intimidation, blackmail, and increased arrests in Canada, stifling our progress, sending Canada backwards, then liberation for all North America is that much more elusive.

Please help us,

Marc Emery


To find out how to donate, go here.
Thank you for your support.

This article can be reprinted and distributed freely.</TD></TR></T></T></T></TABLE>Edited by: Alfa

[motorhead]

The CBC or CTV hasnt posted a story since the 8th of thismonth, the day of Emerys release on bail. Im waiting to hear an official response from the Prime Ministers office lol cant wait. Im going to donate 10 bucks, wish it could be more.


For non-Canadians the CBC and CTV are our countries 2 mainstream media sources, and our current Prime Minister is Paul Martin. All three are being kinda tight lipped. Theres a good bit being posted from the other point of view however, adding links would be pointless.


I think this battle has a lotto do with the internet, and the United States growing fear of it, anlong with everything else it seems. Gotta go more thoughts later.


cheers

[psyvision2000]

It appears as though the DEA is probably posing as Marc Emery and asking 200-300 seed customers to confirm their orders. If you ordered from Marc Emery seeds during May, June, July then be very very careful and safe. Do not confirm your order if you get a letter!


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EMERY WARNS CUSTOMERS

"You may be in danger." That's the message from Emery Seeds, the now-defunct marijuana seed distribution owned by pot activist MARC EMERY, who now faces extradition to the U.S. after being arrested at the request of the American Drug Enforcement Agency ( DEA ) in July.

EMERY's physical seed shop was raided and shut down. Now, staff at Emery Seeds say anyone who's ever bought from the online retailer had better beware: the DEA might be looking for them. "We feel very strongly that this is Law Enforcement trying to sweep up a lot of our customers, many whom are growers," said JODIE GIESZ of emeryseeds.com.

According to GIESZ, approximately 200 to 300 seed orders sent out in June were likely intercepted by the DEA. She said she believes the DEA is now trying to "trick" those buyers into admitting they requested the contraband seeds by sending them a "fake" letter, which purports to be from the distribution company and asks recipients to confirm their order.

GIESZ said responding to this letter and confirming any order would be tantamount to an admission of guilt, but reassured customers Emery Seeds had protected its clients and nothing the DEA seized from the company's headquarters -- records of outgoing orders, for example -- implied clients listed were actually requesting the contraband seeds.

"( The DEA ) can't prove that pieces of mail are seed orders," she said. "What they can do is send their own mail to all of those addresses, with a letter included posing as Marc Emery Direct."

By press time, neither the Vancouver Police Department nor the DEA had returned calls for comment.

EMERY isn't giving up. On Sunday, he posted the following message of defiance on his Cannabis Culture website: "If Canada becomes prohibition free, then American prohibition will fall. But if the United States government is allowed to triumph with intimidation, blackmail and increased arrests in Canada, stifling our progress, sending Canada backwards, then liberation for all North America is that much more elusive. Please help us, MARC EMERY."

[Alfa]

NO APOLOGIES FROM DEA


Special agent Jeffrey Eig, spokes-person at the DEA office's Seattle Field Division, doesn't mince words when talking about Marc Emery, who faces extradition to the U.S. on marijuana-related charges.


"Mr. Emery was engaged in a criminal enterprise when he was sending 75 per cent of his seeds to the United States. We went after him because he's a major criminal-a head of a criminal organization," Eig said Thursday by phone from Seattle. "His organization is tied to multiple marijuana grows and marijuana seeders in the United States, as well as illegal money movement, and when you consider in the United States that there are more young people in treatment from marijuana than all other drugs combined, it's a serious issue and we're going to attack the problem by taking off the leadership."


The DEA has field offices in 58 countries, including Canada, he noted, and its goal is to dismantle drug-related organizations. While Vancouver marijuana activist Emery, 47, was arrested, along with codefendants Gregory Keith Williams, 50, and Michelle Rainey-Fenkarek, 34, Eig is not ruling out further arrests. "The investigation continues and the possibility of more arrests is certainly there...


the DEA is in the business of taking off organizations, not individuals, so we're going to take organizations down from top to bottom and that includes the leadership, financiers, transporters and everybody in between."


Eig won't specify what the role of Vancouver-based DEA agents was in this case, but said its international operations are critical in investigations.


According to Ian Hillman, spokesman for the American consulate in downtown Vancouver, there are four DEA agents working out of the consulate in this city, who are part of what's called an "integrated law enforcement hub," which includes the U.S. Secret Service, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms bureau (ATF), the FBI and Homeland Security. The Secret Service has been based in Vancouver the longest.


Although, perhaps best known for protecting the U.S. president, the Secret Service investigates counterfeit money cases and crimes like credit card fraud.


Hillman said the DEA agents act as liaison officers, meant to help with information exchange with their Canadian counterparts, and to strengthen the integrated border enforcement team, which has existed for a couple of decades. The DEA's assignment in Vancouver, which started about a-year-and-a-half ago, stems from an agreement signed after Sept. 11 to strengthen cross-border cooperation. Another "integrated law enforcement hub" operates in Ottawa and a third is being put together in Toronto.


"[DEA officers are] not investigating officers in the same capacity as they would be in the U.S.," added Hillman, noting they have no authority to make arrests or conduct investigations in Canada.


Eig offers no apologies for the DEA's decision to target Emery and his codefendants, in spite of arguments from many Canadians that marijuana is a harmless drug and the U.S. has no business interfering with Canadian social policies.


"It is not a harmless drug. It devastates lives. Innocent people get harmed by this. It is not a victimless crime that people would portray it as," he said. "And again, [Emery] was making millions of dollars at the expense of people in the United States and Canada and he was doing it by illegal means."

[psyvision2000]

that is so unfortunate that the terror might still continue. They recently raided 3 medicalclubs here in san francisco. They said was an asian orgainzed crime.

[Sick Jack]

A presumed american pot grower published an article on cannabis culture web site (cannabisculture.ca).

He underlines that no commercial growers from the United States will be stupid enough to mail order seeds through the net, because it's the best way to be busted.

This means that the arguments of the DEA are fallacious, the intent is not to stop to provide commercial growers (who will use clones and not seeds), but to prevent Emery from financing the anti-prohibitionnist movement.

[Alfa]

Ehm, it was the 3rd topic below this one: Grower to DEA: Bud Out!It's a good read.

[korky8097]

i really really wish that our government was a government where a
large scale vote could be taken on big drug issues like this. If
they want to be asshats and make it illegal in the US, they can and
will (unfortunatly). But when they start making things their way
in OTHER COUNTRIES, that really pisses me off. How many canadian
crime enforcment teams are operating in major cities here? Is
this like americas slow way of taking over the world?

[drwoo]

Didn't he have a court appearance today with the Supreme court of CA?

[drwoo]

The extradition hearing date is set for Sept 16. Edited by: drwoo

[MrJim]

Tomorrow - In the name of Emery - Smoke out AmericaEdited by: MrJim

[transit]

<h1><st1:country-region><st1lace>America</st1lace></st1:country-region>
Sizes Up the Prince of Pot</h1>




<b style="">Marc Emery
tests limits, fires imagination down south. [/b]




<h6>ByDean
Kuipers </span>

Published: <st1:date year="2005" day="27" month="9">September 27, 2005</st1:date>

AlterNet.org</h6>






Looking back, Marc Emery says it was like a scene out of Bonnie and Clyde.




The publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine and Canada's leading
marijuana rabble-rouser, Emery was sitting in Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia -- the
Lawrencetown Restaurant, in fact -- getting himself together to speak at a
legalization rally. It was July 29, 2005, and the second annual Atlantic Hemp
Fest was already in full swing, with bands and speakers organized by Maritimers
United for Medical Marijuana already entertaining a crowd of about 400-500
people.




Suddenly, the lunchtime crowd vanished. The air changed. "Then I notice
the waitresses getting jittery, and oddly encouraging me to leave in an
unfriendly way that you never find on the East Coast," Emery says.




Not connecting this weirdness to himself - he wasn't breaking any laws -- he
paid his tab and walked outside to his car. Which, oddly, he found boxed in;
ordinary-looking cars were right on his bumper in front and behind. As he stood
there, looking around for whoever needed to move their cars, a large black man
got out of another car parked nearby. Ever polite, Emery quipped,
"Hello."




"Marc Emery?" said the man, not waiting for an answer, "You
are under arrest." This was a mild shock, even though Emery has
intentionally had himself arrested 11 times since 1994 on pot-related charges
as a form of protest. The man Canadians call the "Prince of Pot" knew
such arrests to be mostly pro forma exercises in his country, which he'd used
to prove that pot was de facto legal there. But nothing prepared him for the
remaining clauses of this stranger's brief proclamation. "- for
extradition to the United States, on charges of Conspiracy to Manufacture
Marijuana, Conspiracy to Distribute Marijuana Seeds, and Conspiracy to Engage
in Money Laundering."




This was no exercise. Cars with flashing lights screeched to a halt all
around him, and 10 members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police swarmed him in
full tactical gear and ski masks over their faces. As he spent the night in a <st1:City><st1lace>Halifax</st1lace></st1:City>
holding tank, the reality hit him cold turkey: He wasn't under any charges in <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>,
and never would be. <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>'s
federal Justice Ministry didn't think his crime -- selling marijuana seeds to
fund activist causes - was worth prosecuting. But it was the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) that had nailed him, and they'd also grabbed
two of his comrades at Emery Seeds in Vancouver - Michelle Rainey-Fenkarek, 34,
and Greg Williams, 50 - on the same charges. All three, now known as the
"B.C. 3", face the same sentences.




The DEA had reached across the border into <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>,
exerting heavy pressure on that country's federal law enforcement, and were
going to drag them all to a hellish federal prison in the <st1:country-region><st1lace>United
States</st1lace></st1:country-region>. Possibly for life. The conflicting
attitudes regarding pot could not be framed in more stark terms: <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>,
no charges; <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>,
10 years to life. Canadian response to the arrest has turned the spotlight back
on the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
federal government's ruthless prosecution of marijuana users and activists. It
also mirrors the conflict between the feds and the various states, like <st1:State><st1lace>California</st1lace></st1:State>,
which have legalized pot for medical use.




The disparity between state laws and federal mandatory minimum sentences are
often so huge that activists say they violate the 8th Amendment guarantee
against disproportionate punishment. Emery Seeds is one of about 50 seed
companies operating in <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>,
most of which continue to operate today.




In her bizarre press release of July 29, DEA chief Karen Tandy left little
doubt as to why they singled out Emery's operation. "Today's DEA arrest of
Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine, and the
founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to
the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also the marijuana
legalization movement," it begins, adding: "Hundreds of thousands of
dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to
marijuana legalization groups in the United States and Canada. Drug
legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on."




Last anyone checked, funding ballot initiatives wasn't illegal in the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>,
and this kind of hubris has threatened to turn Emery's extradition proceedings
into a slugfest. Under treaty, the Canadians are bound to turn him over. But
the Prince of Pot might prove the exception to the rule.




Marijuana, it seems, is going to test the relationship between the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
and <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>.




Overgrowing the Government




One thing is very clear about Marc Emery: He definitely broke the law, and
on both sides of the border. And he did it on purpose, in front of God and
everyone else, making a point of calling attention to his lawbreaking activities
in his magazine, on his celebrated web video channel, Pot-TV, and in the
Canadian press. But where the Canadians saw an activist, the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
government evidently saw a guy with a target painted on his back.




"'Overgrowing the government,' that's my phrase for 10 years,"
Emery says by phone from the Cannabis Culture offices in <st1:City><st1lace>Vancouver</st1lace></st1:City>.
"The idea is that we'd sell seeds, people would grow lots of pot, empower
themselves by not needing to buy on the black market, by being self-sufficient
in marijuana and medical marijuana. Hopefully, people would grow so much pot
that the DEA could never eradicate it all, and it would be futile spending all
that money. Then Americans would simply say, 'Well, why should we spend all
this money when it's impossible to stop? We should legalize it.' That was the
strategy on one hand. And then, from the money people sent me," he adds,
"we would give that away to organizations and groups advocating peaceful
democratic change and an end to the Drug War. So the money would be totally useful
at both ends."




"You might want to get the press release from our office, as opposed to
Karen Tandy's," says Todd Greenberg, Assistant U.S. Attorney from the
Western District of Washington, distancing his office from the overzealous DEA
chief, "because I want to emphasize this: He's entitled to publish his
magazine. He's entitled to run for mayor, or do whatever the hell he wants with
his Marijuana Party [chuckles]. It has nothing to do with this case. He's being
prosecuted because he's a one-stop shop for large marijuana grows that we have
busted throughout the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>"
And that's in every state in the union, according to the U.S. Justice
Department.




Here's where Emery's unique political strategy becomes problematic. His
enterprise is what Allen St. Pierre, a Washington, D.C.-based spokesman for the
National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws, or NORML, affectionately calls
a "seed wrap."




Emery Seeds began in 1994, selling high-potency marijuana seeds via mail
order and using his magazine and his well-made Internet site to hawk them to
customers. Those sales are illegal in both the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
and in <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>.
And business is good. A single marijuana plant might yield 4,000 to 5,000
seeds, which are sold for anywhere from $2 to $20 apiece. Do the numbers. They
add up quick. He's been doing it for 11 years, and in 2003 alone, Emery
estimates, the seeds pulled in about $2.2 million Canadian. But, apparently,
Emery keeps almost none of it. He pays out $1 million a year to suppliers, he
says, about $400,000 to support the magazine, the website, and to advertise
(his last paid advertisement was in the San Francisco Chronicle, in
June, for his "Medical Marijuana Pak"), and another $300,000 for
staff. That leaves about $300,000 to $400,000. Which he gives away.




He even paid taxes on that money in <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>
before giving it away, and on his revenue forms he marked his business as
"Marijuana Seed Vendor." He says he doesn't own a car, a house,
investments, or any property, and luckily all his ex-wives and his four adopted
children are self-sufficient now.




"I gave away, over a period of 10-11 years, close to $4 million
Canadian," Emery says now, "to various activists, organizations,
ballot initiatives, politicians, political parties, conferences, rallies -- you
name it." That includes $19,000 for a medical marijuana ballot initiative
in <st1:State><st1lace>Arizona</st1lace></st1:State>. And $7,000 for one in
<st1:State><st1lace>Alaska</st1lace></st1:State>. Then $5,000 for one in <st1lace><st1:City>Washington</st1:City>,
<st1:State>D.C.</st1:State></st1lace> He's tabulating this stuff now, but
says his <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
contributions total "probably no more than half a million."




He's also given loads of money to Canadian politicians and political parties
- even when he was running for mayor or Parliament himself. "Politicians
of every stripe both took my money and showed up at conferences to speak on
legalizing marijuana," he notes. "Jack Layton, the leader of the New
Democratic Party, came to my home 18 months ago and filmed an interview to be
broadcast on Pot-TV. The mayor came to a conference that I put on with seed
money last year called 'Beyond Prohibition 2004.' Every politician in Parliament
had a subscription to our magazine for the last eight years. And in all that
time, I never had a complaint from anybody about selling seeds."




Nobody in the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
has ever worked like this. In fact, says NORML's <st1:City><st1lace>St.
Pierre</st1lace></st1:City>, we haven't seen anything like this since a cat
known only as Neville first started selling seeds via mail order in the <st1:country-region><st1lace>Netherlands</st1lace></st1:country-region>
in the 1980s. "Nobody has ever been as plotting and as pragmatic about
trying to combine commerce, politics, and rabble-rousing, than Marc has,"
says <st1:City><st1lace>St. Pierre</st1lace></st1:City>. "He is a
complex individual. In this country, the closest example are Yippies. But Marc
has taken it further. Unlike a number of folks that are about enriching
themselves personally, in a semi-Messianic way he's developed a wont to give as
much as he can back towards the politics of changing the laws."




The U.S. Justice Department is unmoved by these facts. U.S. Attorney
Greenberg says not only have they connected Emery Seeds to big commercial grows
- more than just DIY medical marijuana patients - but Emery's website (now shut
down) also offered all the other paraphernalia one would need to grow or smoke
pot. "He would send 8- to 10-page instruction booklets on how to
grow," says Greenberg. "Then he had a part of his business on the
website called the Little Grow Shop. He sold the large apparatus to grow
marijuana … plus lights, fans, fertilizer, irrigation-type systems."




Plus, he used the Internet to solicit worldwide. Any money that went across
the Canadian border, in either direction, constitutes money laundering. Jeff
Eig, spokesman for the DEA in <st1:City><st1lace>Seattle</st1lace></st1:City>,
says he doesn't expect any problems getting Emery extradited out of <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>.
"The bottom line is that he's facing three significant charges in federal
court," Eig says. "He faces significant exposure to the law, facing
in anywhere from <st1:time minute="0" hour="10">10</st1:time> to 40 years, or
up to life, on those charges."




Blame <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>!




"Oh, I'm outraged, I see this as a purely political maneuver by the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
government and the Drug Czar. It's political pressure," says Libby Davies,
Member of Parliament, from <st1lace>East Vancouver</st1lace>. Emery's
bookstore office, where he sold the seeds, is near her district. "What is
he guilty of -- selling marijuana seeds on the Internet. He's been doing that
for over a decade, and no one in <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>
has prosecuted him.




"There's not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that this is entirely
politically motivated, and it is to back <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>
into a corner," she adds, "sort of the old adage from Bush, 'Are you
with us or are you agin' us?'"




<st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region> has
been softening its laws regarding marijuana possession for years, and some of
the most progressive harm reduction policy has been implemented in <st1:City><st1lace>Vancouver</st1lace></st1:City>.
For several years, a federal bill to decriminalize marijuana possession has
plodded through the Canadian Parliament, and U.S. Drug Czar John Walters has
campaigned through the Great White North to try to squash it. In 2002, Rep.
Mark Souder (R-IN), chair of a key congressional drug-policy committee and
infamous anti-pot crusader, told the Globe and Mail that <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>
is free to make its own laws but passage of the decriminalization bill could
cause Congress to tighten the border with <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>
- thus threatening the flow of goods to that country's biggest trading partner.




These threats are not laughed off. There is a caucus within the ruling
Liberal Party who believe <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>
ought to listen to Walters. But many find his efforts there offensive. Former
Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in
August that he met with Walters on one of his pro-Drug War tours in 2002, and
called it "the most unsatisfactory meeting of my life. The pressure was
intense."




"I feel that, politically, they cannot sanction the fact that <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>
is taking a different perspective, and that we're much closer to a European
model when it comes to drug policy reform," says MP Libby Davies. "I
think there are a lot of Americans who would like to … adopt more of a Canadian
approach on a number of things, whether it's health care or equal marriage
rights for same-sex couples, or drug policy."




Davies says she and other members of government will lobby Canadian Justice
Minister Irwin Cotler to refuse extradition of Emery. Under treaty with the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>,
Cotler was apparently required to provide Mounties to execute the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
arrest warrant, and will be required to present Emery for extradition hearings.
Even if a judge decides to send him to the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>,
however, Cotler still has broad discretion to say no.




Vancouver Sun columnist Peter McKnight, in a September 10 piece
laying out the several options for refusing extradition, wrapped it up with the
idea that Emery's "persecution" might actually advance the
legalization cause, writing: "That leaves Cotler with one last way to
refuse extradition, and it's a way that, for both legal and moral reasons,
Cotler ought to take. Whether he wants to admit it or not, selling viable
cannabis seeds is de facto legal in <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>,
and Cotler can therefore refuse to surrender Emery on the grounds that what he
is charged with in the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
is not an offence [sic] in <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>."




Chris Girouard, a spokesman for the Justice Ministry, says selling viable
pot seeds is a crime in <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>,
but that the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
can determine what conduct should be treated as a crime in the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>,
"so the frequency of the prosecution in <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>
is not a factor."




The Prince of Pot




The fact that mainstream Canadian columnists like McKnight are going to bat
for a pothead is attributable, in many ways, to the work of Marc Emery himself.
When he launched Emery Seeds in 1994, Canadian laws were more strict than the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
Even distributing literature about pot could get you six months in jail. No
store dared to carry bongs or pipes. Or a pair of hemp shoes.




He opened a bookstore and began importing Jack Herer's hemp bible, The
Emperor Wears No Clothes, then went door-to-door selling High Times and books
about industrial hemp and medical marijuana. He started the BC Marijuana Party,
which spawned a <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
equivalent, and ran for mayor twice, the provincial legislature three times,
and federal Parliament once.




His Cannabis Culture magazine and website enjoy heavy readerships and
his Pot-TV programs have received as many as 10 million viewers - including, he
says, the children of Justice Minister Cotler. Co-conspirator Michelle Rainey
was the financial agent for the BC Marijuana Party, and worked out of the
bookstore. Greg Williams, an employee of Pot-TV, was also arrested there.




These new institutions notwithstanding, Emery built his reputation through
Yippie-like national campaigns that put the pot issue on <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>'s
front pages. In 2003, he launched the Summer of Legalization Tour, contending
that pot was legal and demonstrating this by smoking a bong or a huge joint in
front of police stations in 18 cities across <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>.
Ultimately, he was charged in six cities and five provinces.




"All those charges were dropped because I was right, pot really was
legal and their courts just hadn't acknowledged it," crows Emery. He
operated so openly, and with such impunity, that it came as a bit of a shock
when he was actually convicted on a similar offense in 2004. He was barreling
along on a 22-city speaking tour of university campuses, once again making a
show of a few token tokes, when he was busted flat in <st1lace><st1:City>Saskatoon</st1:City>,
<st1:State>Saskatchewan</st1:State></st1lace>, for passing a joint.




Emery has earned some support from the Canadian people. But not all of his
rapid-fire extemporizing has worked. After his arrest in July, he called Cotler
a "Jewish Nazi" and compared marijuana prohibition to the Holocaust,
drawing howls from online commentators. He has also made a habit of telling
reporters that, since selling 60,000 seeds would make him a "kingpin"
under Newt Gingrich's draconian federal drug statute, he could be subject to
the death penalty. U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg insists he is not subject to
that charge, which would make extradition illegal. "If I'm extradited,
Canadians will never see me alive again," Emery says. "And even if
the Canadian government tried to make an arrangement to have me sent back to a
Canadian prison, I am certain that I'd be murdered or damaged mentally by the
time I got to <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>,
so I could never actively work against the government again." In the
battle of bluster, he and DEA head Karen Tandy seem made for each other.




Do Not Respond to the Blue Letters!




Then again, Emery has plenty of strange evidence to fuel his conspiratorial
fears. First of all, the DEA statement seems to indicate they're investigating
not only his customers but also the activists and politicians who've taken his
money. Then, shortly after his arrest, customers who had ordered seeds from
Emery received mysterious letters, printed on blue stock, which seemed like a
sting operation.




The letters, printed on the Cannabis Culture website, acknowledge the
shutdown of Emery Seeds, offer a hip-hooray to Emery himself with some weird
cult-of-personality cheers - "Smoke For Our Leader! Overgrow The
Government!" -- then ask for another $100 to fill the already-paid order.
Customers are instructed to go to either <st1lace>Western Union</st1lace>
or Wal-Mart to send the $100 to someone in <st1:City><st1lace>Vancouver</st1lace></st1:City>,
using a different name each time, like Mike Wong or Patrick Oliver, and to use
a specific password, "SWAP."




In order to complete the order and receive seeds, customers were required to
e-mail a confirmation of their order, the Money Control Number, the real name
of the sender, and their home address (no P.O. box accepted) to a Yahoo e-mail.
Which would give an agent every piece of information they would need to arrest
and convict someone for buying pot. Evidently, no one was fooled. Instead,
scores of customers all over the world simply sent the letters back to Emery as
evidence. The splash page on his now-closed seed company website barks in huge
block letters: "DO NOT RESPOND TO THE BLUE LETTERS!"




Todd Greenberg laughs at the idea that this is a sting: "You've gotta
think: His customers, many of them, are engaged in criminal activity," he
says. "Would it shock you that they'd seize upon this as a way to make
some money? I think he's paranoid." Asked if this is a DEA operation, Jeff
Eig says, "Not that I know of." For his part, Emery is girding for
political battle. He is terrified, but also energized. He's accustomed to the
bittersweet quality of his notoriety: Every time he's been profiled by major
media, he's been busted -- a month after appearing on the cover of The Wall
Street Journal, a month after a profile in Rolling Stone, two months
after being the subject of a CNN Special.




This time, the situation is flipped. The DEA has given him a mighty tall
soapbox. But now he's trying to save not just the weed, and not just his own
ass, but those of Rainey and Williams, too. "The whole business
proposition was to raise money to start a revolutionary botanical movement to
destroy the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
drug war and to stop this vicious gulaging that goes on with our people,"
he says, adding, "So I was very good at what I do, 'cause the DEA
noticed."




Dean Kuipers is editor of LA CityBeat. This story is distributed by
Alternet.


http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/09/27/PrinceofPot/

[transit]

</span><st1:date year="2005" day="25" month="10">Tuesday, October 25, 2005</st1:date>


<b style="">B.C.'s "Prince of
Pot" fights extradition on drug charges[/b]


By Peter Lewis


Seattle Times staff reporter


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ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES</span>


A patron of the New
Amsterdam Cafe in Vancouver, B.C., smokes marijuana in the establishment's
designated "smoke room." Marc Emery's B.C. Marijuana Party
headquarters is next door to the cafe.</span>




<st1:City><st1lace>VANCOUVER</st1lace></st1:City>, B.C. — Marc Emery
differs in so many ways from most people accused of big-time drug dealing, it's
hard to know where to start.




Even though he faces the possibility of decades in a <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
prison for selling marijuana seeds to Americans, Emery regularly welcomes a
steady stream of journalists. That's an approach most people accused of drug
dealing avoid instinctively, or on advice of their attorneys.




Not Emery, founder of the B.C. Marijuana Party, who maintains that his legal
troubles spring from the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
government's desire to muzzle him and the movement he claims to lead.




He relishes his reputation as the so-called "Prince of Pot" and
"Mayor of Vansterdam," the latter a reference to <st1:City><st1lace>Vancouver</st1lace></st1:City>
and <st1:City><st1lace>Amsterdam</st1lace></st1:City>, the Dutch city where
marijuana can be purchased from "coffee shops." He proudly proclaims
his long-term vision to "overgrow the government" by spreading
marijuana faster than drug agents could eradicate it.




Unlike others accused of drug dealing, Emery has for years made no effort to
hide the fact he earns his living from marijuana, making millions selling
marijuana seeds and paraphernalia through his Vancouver store and the Internet.
It's that marijuana-centered business that has landed Emery in hot water in the
<st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>, where a
Seattle-based grand jury has indicted him and two of his employees on drug and
money-laundering charges.




Emery, who is free on bond, freely expounds on the virtues of marijuana for
both recreational and medicinal purposes. He claims to have poured nearly $4
million (Canadian) into political and legal causes to decriminalize marijuana
and/or to make it available for medical use, including ballot initiatives in <st1:State><st1lace>Nevada</st1lace></st1:State>,
<st1:State><st1lace>Alaska</st1lace></st1:State> and <st1:State><st1lace>Arizona</st1lace></st1:State>.




The case against Marc Emery

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What: A federal grand jury in Seattle has indicted Marc Emery,
Gregory Williams and Michelle Rainey-Fenkarek on charges of conspiracy to
manufacture marijuana, conspiracy to distribute marijuana and conspiracy to
engage in money laundering. All relate to Emery's <st1:City><st1lace>Vancouver</st1lace></st1:City>,
B.C.-based marijuana-seed selling business. The U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration described Emery's business as one of the U.S. Attorney General's
"most wanted" international drug-trafficking targets. Conviction
could result in life imprisonment; the first two counts each carry mandatory
10-year minimum sentences.




What's next: All three defendants are Canadian nationals
who were arrested under a legal-assistance treaty with the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
They are resisting extradition, a process that could take up to two years. The
defendants are expected to argue they were selectively prosecuted as a result
of political activism to spread marijuana.




Emery contends a news release issued July 29, the day of his arrest, reveals
the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
government's intention to mute his efforts to advance the spread of marijuana.
In the release, Karen Tandy, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration,
wrote: "Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis
Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a
significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and
Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement. ... Hundreds of
thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been
channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the <st1:country-region><st1lace>United
States</st1lace></st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>."




Tandy's office has declined to comment about the statement, but locally,
federal prosecutors have distanced themselves from her remarks.




Todd Greenberg, the lead assistant <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
attorney on the case, said he could understand how her comments could be
interpreted as having a political dimension but added, "No one locally has
made such a statement. No prosecutor, no agent, no one in <st1:City><st1lace>Seattle</st1lace></st1:City>."




"As the chief [federal] law-enforcement official here, I'm not
interested in his political speech in the slightest," added Seattle U.S.
Attorney John McKay. "He's a legitimate target."




Prosecutors contend that Emery was targeted because he was <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>'s
largest supplier of seeds and marijuana-growing equipment, and because the
majority of his customers were <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
citizens. Prosecutors allege that Emery also has provided customers with
detailed instructions on how to grow marijuana, and also sold specialized
lights, fans and fertilizer.




"He was a one-stop shopping facilitator for marijuana growers,"
Greenberg said.




Emery does not quarrel with the substance of the charges, though he has much
to say about the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
government's "war on drugs," which he described as "immoral and
lethal." In fact, he is unabashedly proud of his efforts.




"If I'm going to be sentenced to life in prison in a <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
jail, it'll be for what I've done, and I'm proud of what I've done," said
Emery. "And there's no going back on that. I helped facilitate hopefully
millions of Americans to grow marijuana."




At the request of the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
government, Canadian prosecutors are working to force Emery and co-defendants
Michelle Rainey-Fenkarek and Gregory Williams to appear in <st1:City><st1lace>Seattle</st1lace></st1:City>
federal court to answer drug-conspiracy and money-laundering charges stemming
from Emery's seed and marijuana-growing business.




They are fighting extradition, a process that legal experts say could take
up to two years. Theirs will be an uphill fight, acknowledges John Conroy, a
Canadian lawyer assisting the defendants.




Conroy notes that the U.S.-Canadian treaty under which Emery and the others
were arrested creates an exception for extradition in the case of offenses of a
"political character." The problem, Conroy adds, is that the treaty
goes on to deem certain crimes, including drug offenses, as ineligible for the
political-character exception.




Another argument likely to be advanced is "cruel and unusual
punishment," Conroy said, referring to the much harsher sentence the
defendants would face in the <st1:country-region><st1lace>U.S.</st1lace></st1:country-region>
— up to life in prison.




"I face a penalty longer than what you'd get for multiple murder in <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>,"
Emery said.




Technically, Emery could face up to life in prison under Canadian law. But
Conroy, a noted criminal-defense attorney, said there are no mandatory minimum
sentences in <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>
and that "life in prison" means the defendant is generally eligible
for parole after seven years, except in murder cases.




<st1:State><st1lace>British Columbia</st1lace></st1:State> courts levied
fines but didn't imposed jail time on the three occasions Emery was convicted
of selling marijuana seeds. The punishment is consistent with a judicial attitude
reflected in a 2003 drug-case ruling by Court of Appeals Justice Mary Southin,
who described marijuana as "no better or worse, morally or physically,
than people who like a martini."




Emery said he is happy to become a martyr for the movement. He thanks the
DEA for the heightened exposure, because he says he's suddenly become relevant
to people who don't smoke marijuana.




"Now I'm meeting a lot of people, including very old people, who are
alarmed about the sovereignty of this country," Emery said. "But also
Americans who are just shocked by the potential prison sentence I might
get."




The meaning of life




Emery's appearance and eloquence might surprise those who automatically
associate pot with the spaced-out persona made famous by the Cheech and Chong
comedy team. Now 47, he says he has smoked marijuana almost daily for 25 years.




Clean-shaven and nerdy-looking with a high forehead, Emery could pass for a
stockbroker or an accountant. In fact, he was a bookseller for many years
before he dedicated his life to growing marijuana.




He credits marijuana with making him a better parent, a better lover and
even a better driver, partly because it made him understand that life was
"all about discovery, not actualization."




He published his political manifesto a decade ago in the first edition of
his magazine, Cannabis Culture:




"We are a wrongly outlawed culture, viciously discriminated against for
72 years, and we are finally effectively organizing to reclaim our rightful
place in society as individuals among equals. We have a right to our culture
and we must act and inform to ensure that we receive proper justice."




Of the political course he set for himself, Emery said in a recent
interview, "I wanted to rapidly change the way the world looks at
marijuana." Hence his decision to popularize the use of seeds along with
instructions on how to grow them.




"I sold millions of seeds over 11 years, all over the world,"
Emery said, offering more than 500 varieties.




His highest grossing year for seed sales was 2002, when he took in $2.2
million (Canadian), he said. He also said he has provided free seeds to people
certified as medical-marijuana patients.




Since 1999, Emery says he has paid $578,000 (Canadian) in income tax,
identifying seed-sales as the source of his income to the Canadian Revenue
Agency, the equivalent of the IRS.




Legalization and leniency




Emery said he continues to smoke marijuana despite his arrest and subsequent
release on $50,000 bond. But less often these days, he said, because he can no
longer afford it.




Emery also is something of a provocateur. Three years ago, for example,
Emery and other marijuana activists bought a table at a luncheon in <st1:City><st1lace>Vancouver</st1lace></st1:City>
where Bush administration drug czar John Walters was making a presentation.




Every time Walters made a comment about marijuana that Emery and his friends
believed was untrue, they'd heckle him. "We yelled 'liar,' " Emery
recalled, "so he [Walters] just had a total slow burn. ... I'm sure I've
never been forgiven for that."




Then there was the "summer of legalization tour" in 2003. Emery
recounted that he "smoked a bong or a big joint in front of police
stations in 18 cities across <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>."




He has been arrested many times, but more often than not the charges were
dropped, Emery said. The point, he added, was to demonstrate his belief that
marijuana is effectively legal in <st1:country-region><st1lace>Canada</st1lace></st1:country-region>.




In fact, possession of 30 grams or less of marijuana (including marijuana
seeds), carries punishment of up to 12 months in prison and a $1,000 fine.




Emery felt the sting of Canadian enforcement in the summer of 2004, when he
served 62 days in Saskatoon Correctional Centre for possession and trafficking
after admitting he'd passed a joint in a public park. But Emery chalked that
experience up to landing in front of an unforgiving judge in a conservative
province.




You'd never know marijuana is illegal walking around parts of <st1:City><st1lace>Vancouver</st1lace></st1:City>.




Next door to Emery's B.C. Marijuana Party headquarters on <st1:Street><st1:address>West
Hastings Street</st1:address></st1:Street>, toward the back of the New
Amsterdam Cafe, is a designated "smoke room" where patrons smoke
marijuana and tobacco weekdays until <st1:time minute="30" hour="16">4:30 p.m.</st1:time>




Smoking is confined to the room during normal work hours to be
"respectful" of neighboring businesses, an employee said. But after <st1:time minute="30" hour="16">4:30 p.m.</st1:time> weekdays, and on the weekends, the
ashtrays move into the main dining room.




A question of tactics




Before the DEA raided Emery's business in July, it had been seven years
since Vancouver Police had charged him for seed sales. A police spokeswoman
said he was charged in September 1998 with two counts of "possession with
the purpose of trafficking viable marijuana seeds," for which he was fined
$4,000, and served no jail time.




Some find Emery's style unnecessarily confrontational. Vancouver Mayor Larry
Campbell, for example, says he has nothing against Emery but questions his
tactics.




<st1:City><st1lace>Campbell</st1lace></st1:City> said he supports
legalizing marijuana and controlling it in much the same fashion as tobacco and
cigarettes, including taxing it to the hilt. The taxes should be dedicated, he
added, to pay for health care for addiction services.




Still, he adds, "Marc thinks he's more than he really is. ... Marc
thinks he's the Mahatma Gandhi of the movement. ...




"You keep poking a stick in the eye of the DEA, something's going to
happen, and effectively, that's what he did."




Peter Lewis: 206-464-2217 or plewis@seattletimes.com


Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...s/2002581507_e mery25m.html

[fnord]

quote dea:when you consider in the United States that there are more young people in treatment from marijuana than all other drugs combined

huh,dont you guys just love statistics?i cant think of anyone besides maybe some 15 year old kid whose rich parents found a joint on him,who would be in rehab for pot.im guesseing that these statistics come from the fact that 9 out of 10 inmates in rehab,smoke pot,that dosent men there in rehab for pot.