Smokin Moose
Fallen Cannabis Warrior & Ex Moderator
Nick Wilson's long anticipated documentary on Marc Emery, The Prince of Pot, aired on CBC Newsworld's The Lens last week, painting a very bleak picture of Emery's chances of being extradited to America to face charges brought two years ago by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Charges of conspiracy to distribute marijuana, conspiracy to distribute marijuana seeds and conspiracy to engage in money laundering were laid following an 18-month investigation by U.S. and Canadian police into Emery's multi-million-dollar operation as an international marijuana seed vendor.
Emery had faced nearly a dozen charges over the years from various Canadian police forces, but the consequences each time out in this marijuana-tolerant land were strictly small potatoes -- usually fines that could be readily paid off without interruption to his business, or short jail sentences.
Earlier this decade, it looked like Canada was going to decriminalize marijuana possession altogether. Then-prime minister Jean Chretien even joked about the imminence of such a move ( "Don't start smoking yet," he said ) until American politicians warned any such move would impeded international trade.
Political talk about legalizing pot abruptly stopped, but Canada's lax attitude toward the prosecution of consumers of the drug remained.
Incarcerating Emery, Canadian police soon realized, was counterproductive. The media attention that imprisonment garnered only fed Emery's tireless campaigning to expose inconsistencies in Canadian law on pot.
South of the border there was no such inconsistency. The enormously profitable activities up here that would get Emery an occasional slap on the wrist would get him 10 years to life in an American jail. And that's the chilling likelihood Emery faces when he's extradited to the States and prosecuted under their laws.
Much of Wilson's documentary fuels the viewer's outrage at the supposed breach in sovereignty that has allowed an American police agency to prosecute a Canadian on Canadian soil. It seems Wilson indulges in a little too much America-bashing and gives short shrift to the idea sovereignty cuts both ways.
Sure, you can declare the U.S. war on drugs an appallingly ham-fisted way to deal with a complex social problem.
But at the end of the day, their laws are their laws and Emery's activities as a self-proclaimed major supplier of seeds to grow operations in virtually every state of the Union ran flagrantly afoul of those laws. Under the terms of an international treaty, Canada is compelled to turn Emery over to the American justice system.
Another major theme of the documentary is Emery's big mouth.
There are other Canadian suppliers of pot seeds to American consumers ( perhaps not operating on so large a scale and certainly not making so much noise about it ) who are not being pursued in this way.
Through his Cannabis Culture magazine and website and his web video channel, Pot TV, Emery has not only championed legalizing pot, he has ridiculed and slandered anyone who opposed him.
Such tactics will be all too familiar to Londoners who watched the budding anarchist decades ago as he originally tilted at windmills as quaint as beautification levies imposed by the Downtown Business Association and Ontario's inconsistent Sunday shopping laws. I worked for Emery as a clerk in his City Lights Bookshop in the early '80s; always grateful I worked upstairs, beyond Marc's range as he nattered on incessantly about his political/libertarian causes du jour.
While I initially admired his willingness to wrestle with ideas, that impulse withered over the months and years as I watched his tone become more strident and his tactics more heavy-handed and even hurtful.
Likewise, London media seemed to back away from Emery somewhat as his battles became more seedy ( no pun intended ) and desperate. Then he set his sights on bigger ponds where they would -- and perhaps did -- give him enough headlines to hang himself.
Source: London Free Press (CN ON)
Copyright: 2007 The London Free Press
Contact: London Free Press: Letters to the Editor
Website: London Free Press
Charges of conspiracy to distribute marijuana, conspiracy to distribute marijuana seeds and conspiracy to engage in money laundering were laid following an 18-month investigation by U.S. and Canadian police into Emery's multi-million-dollar operation as an international marijuana seed vendor.
Emery had faced nearly a dozen charges over the years from various Canadian police forces, but the consequences each time out in this marijuana-tolerant land were strictly small potatoes -- usually fines that could be readily paid off without interruption to his business, or short jail sentences.
Earlier this decade, it looked like Canada was going to decriminalize marijuana possession altogether. Then-prime minister Jean Chretien even joked about the imminence of such a move ( "Don't start smoking yet," he said ) until American politicians warned any such move would impeded international trade.
Political talk about legalizing pot abruptly stopped, but Canada's lax attitude toward the prosecution of consumers of the drug remained.
Incarcerating Emery, Canadian police soon realized, was counterproductive. The media attention that imprisonment garnered only fed Emery's tireless campaigning to expose inconsistencies in Canadian law on pot.
South of the border there was no such inconsistency. The enormously profitable activities up here that would get Emery an occasional slap on the wrist would get him 10 years to life in an American jail. And that's the chilling likelihood Emery faces when he's extradited to the States and prosecuted under their laws.
Much of Wilson's documentary fuels the viewer's outrage at the supposed breach in sovereignty that has allowed an American police agency to prosecute a Canadian on Canadian soil. It seems Wilson indulges in a little too much America-bashing and gives short shrift to the idea sovereignty cuts both ways.
Sure, you can declare the U.S. war on drugs an appallingly ham-fisted way to deal with a complex social problem.
But at the end of the day, their laws are their laws and Emery's activities as a self-proclaimed major supplier of seeds to grow operations in virtually every state of the Union ran flagrantly afoul of those laws. Under the terms of an international treaty, Canada is compelled to turn Emery over to the American justice system.
Another major theme of the documentary is Emery's big mouth.
There are other Canadian suppliers of pot seeds to American consumers ( perhaps not operating on so large a scale and certainly not making so much noise about it ) who are not being pursued in this way.
Through his Cannabis Culture magazine and website and his web video channel, Pot TV, Emery has not only championed legalizing pot, he has ridiculed and slandered anyone who opposed him.
Such tactics will be all too familiar to Londoners who watched the budding anarchist decades ago as he originally tilted at windmills as quaint as beautification levies imposed by the Downtown Business Association and Ontario's inconsistent Sunday shopping laws. I worked for Emery as a clerk in his City Lights Bookshop in the early '80s; always grateful I worked upstairs, beyond Marc's range as he nattered on incessantly about his political/libertarian causes du jour.
While I initially admired his willingness to wrestle with ideas, that impulse withered over the months and years as I watched his tone become more strident and his tactics more heavy-handed and even hurtful.
Likewise, London media seemed to back away from Emery somewhat as his battles became more seedy ( no pun intended ) and desperate. Then he set his sights on bigger ponds where they would -- and perhaps did -- give him enough headlines to hang himself.
Source: London Free Press (CN ON)
Copyright: 2007 The London Free Press
Contact: London Free Press: Letters to the Editor
Website: London Free Press
