Emery Latest Victim of a Stupid War on Drugs

Jim Finnel

Fallen Cannabis Warrior & Ex News Moderator
It's certainly not the worst crime committed in the name of the war on drugs.

That title probably belongs to the countless innocent people killed in botched raids. Or the police officers who died in pursuit of the impossible. Or the lives lost to easily preventable overdoses and blood-borne diseases. Or the funding handed to thugs, terrorists and guerrillas. Or the civil liberties eroded, the corruption fostered, the chaos spread. Or maybe it belongs to the hundreds of billions of dollars governments have squandered in a mad, futile and destructive crusade.

Next to all that, the extradition of Marc Emery to the United States is no great travesty.

Emery is the Vancouver activist who has long campaigned for the legalization of marijuana. To fund his efforts, he ran a little seed company similar to thousands of other little seed companies, except when Emery's seeds were put in soil, watered and given sunlight, they grew into cannabis plants.

Showing rare good sense, Canadian officials decided that prosecuting a man for selling the seeds of a common plant is not a public priority. In effect, they permitted Emery's business, and others like it, to operate. Health Canada officials were even known to direct those licensed to possess medical marijuana to Emery.

But such pragmatism smacks of heresy to the holy warriors of prohibition. In 2005, Emery was arrested by Canadian police acting at the behest of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Innocent Americans had been lured into purchasing Emery's wicked wares, the DEA alleged.

Emery fought extradition for five years. On Monday, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson ordered him handed over. Thanks to the insanely punitive sentencing laws in the Land of the Incarcerated, Emery faced as much as 20 years. He accepted a plea bargain for five.

Emery argued that he was a political target, that the DEA was out to get him in order to silence a prominent advocate of marijuana legalization. One might suspect delusions of grandeur, except the DEA issued a press release in which the agency's chief says pretty much exactly what Emery alleges: "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."

But let's not get distracted by the mendacity of the DEA or the embarrassing servility of a Canadian government willing to go along with this farce. Let's stand back and ask the only question worth asking.

What the hell is the point of all this?

Emery will only be the latest of millions of people imprisoned for possessing or selling marijuana. The cost of this effort, in liberty and dollars, has been immense. Is it worth it?

Marijuana isn't "safe." No drug is. No substance is. Saying that marijuana isn't safe in no way supports the policy of criminalization.

What would support criminalization is evidence showing that by putting nice, taxpaying businessmen like Emery in prison, we so significantly reduce marijuana consumption and related harms that the benefits of the policy outweigh the costs.

I've studied the issue for more than a decade and I've never seen anything remotely suggesting this is true. In fact, I've seen plenty of evidence that criminalization has little or no effect on consumption rates and does bugger all to reduce related harms.

What criminalization does do is generate a long list of unintended consequences, all of them bad. The Taliban, for example, makes big money from Afghanistan's marijuana growers -- when a Canadian soldier loses his legs to a roadside bomb, there's the good chance the black market in marijuana paid for the device.

There wouldn't be a black market in marijuana if it were legal and regulated. And the profits of the marijuana trade would go to businessmen like Emery instead of gangsters, goons, and medieval maniacs.

You would think politicians would at least want to study the issue.

But they won't study it. They won't even talk about it. Wrapped in a cosy blanket of ignorance and group-think, they're perfectly comfortable with a policy that funds people who blow the legs off Canadian soldiers and puts guys like Emery in prison.

This is no ordinary stupidity. It's criminal stupidity. Which is, come to think of it, probably the worst of the many crimes committed in the name of the war on drugs.


NewsHawk: User: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2010 Times Colonist
Contact: Letters To The Editor | Victoria Times Colonist
Website: Times Colonist | Latest Breaking News | Business | Sports | Canada Daily News
Author: Dan Gardner
 
Wrapped in a cosy blanket of ignorance and group-think, they're perfectly comfortable with a policy that funds people who blow the legs off Canadian soldiers and puts guys like Emery in prison.

This is no ordinary stupidity. It's criminal stupidity.
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2010 Times Colonist
Author: Dan Gardner
Where is the humanity?
Emery is a very intelligent man, and a threat to the blanket.
Shame on the DEA! Focus on what matters, ending an unjust war on drugs.
Is the DEA afraid to go after the goons and gansters? YES!
 
I just found out about this last night. I'm so irritated with it. MMJ makes my life & the lives of many people who use it tolerable, livable & can actually aid in saving a person's life when they are able to reduce or eliminate the use of other medications that have toxic, unforgiving effects on the body & its organs.

Of course it would make sense to go after Emery instead of things that matter like... I dunno, drug lords & the criminals that feed on our adolescents with REAL drugs. (where is the eye rolling smiley?)
 
Prohibition in the early 1900s did not work; it caused the mob and all that came with them.

I just do not understand the stupidity. Those that discuss the horrors of legalizing marijuana and most likely doing so while they drink their brains away.
 
I just do not understand the stupidity.

I think it has become to big of a business. The immoral war on drugs creates jobs and money. Shame on our government for grabbing money from where ever and who ever they can. Obama is not on our side. He just wanted our votes. This man is the quintisesntial politician. He is from Chicago, "the windy city".
:peace:
 
an international mafia is at the helm of this, and it is all about MONEY. while pot is illegal, the street price stays high. almost every country has a law against marijuana, although their own scientists find it to be beneficial. who is behind keeping it illegal then? bigPharma (competition), law enforcement (jobs), prisons (an industry), smugglers (lucrative), growers (people who could help us with supply, but they are greedy), lawyers (keeps them in money defending and prosecuting offenders). who pays for this all? joe, the taxpayer. those who get caught with weed are separated from loved ones, lose jobs and livelihoods, families suffer and homes get repossessed.
we have to seriously look at law enforcement when we complain about an estimated 43 million americans in poverty.
 
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