Seeding Sovereignty
Canada's Prince of Pot agrees to five years in a Canadian prison. The Western Standard digs in to report on the activities that got Marc Emery in trouble with the U.S. government.
William Hopper - January 16, 2008
Marc Emery has agreed to settle his hotly-contested extradition order with the United States by accepting a ten-year sentence with a minimum of five years behind bars to be served on his native Canadian soil, rather than fight an extradition hearing which was set to begin on January 21. Emery was facing charges of selling millions of marijuana seeds into the U.S. along with Greg Williams and Michelle Rainey. If Emery holds true to form, he will walk into prison within 60 days with his head held high, triumphant and unafraid. He is truly courageous. Or insane. It depends on who you ask.
Emery's current troubles began on July 29, 2005, as he was leaving the Lawrence Town Restaurant in Novas Scotia. Somewhere between sending his salad back and paying his tab, several cars had blocked in the blue Ford Taurus he’d rented from Avis. All he could do was stare in bewilderment at the traffic jam that had mysteriously appeared around his car.
Before he could make sense of what he was seeing, Marc became aware that there seemed to be an awful lot of people walking straight toward him. Notably, ten of them were Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers in full tactical gear and ski masks. Having tasted the fare at the Lawrence Town Restaurant, he felt certain that the they were not there for the daily special.
"Are you Marc Emery, a.k.a. the Prince of Pot?" one of them asked.
Sheepishly, Emery offered a "yes, that's me."
Badges and arrest warrants flew past his eyes as he was "taken down." Moments later he was sitting in the back of a police car, bound for Halifax. Once there he was transferred to Dartmouth, then Vancouver, and finally to his penultimate destination, North Fraser Remand Centre. "I was so happy to get to North Fraser," Marc said in an interview with the Western Standard. "It was the first place they’d sent me to where the vegetarian food was edible."
Being arrested came as no surprise to Emery. He had lived in open violation of Canada's marijuana laws for decades. He has been arrested 22 times for marijuana violations, and jailed for 17 of these. When his shop in Vancouver, Hemp B.C., was raided for selling marijuana paraphernalia and seeds, he reopened it the next day. Instead of hiding his activities, be founded the B.C. Marijuana Party, fielding candidates in every one of B.C.'s 79 ridings during the 2000 elections. He is the publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine, producer of Pot-TV, and Canada's most outspoken advocate of marijuana legalization.
Shortly after his arrest, Emery learned that the RCMP had no interest in charging him. Nor did the province of Nova Scotia, or his home province of British Columbia. In fact, there was no one in the entire country who wanted to wade into the murky waters of Canadian cannabis laws to have Emery charged for selling marijuana seeds online through his web-based business Marc Emery Direct Seeds. He had been arrested for violations of title 21, sections 841 and 846 of the United States Code.
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