He wasn’t just B.C.’s self-anointed ‘Prince of Pot’; for most of his life, he’s also been the commander-in-chief in a one-man drug war against the Canadian and U.S. government. His battle plan was simple: ‘overgrow’ the government by producing so much marijuana and so much public pressure that law enforcement would be so stretched the powers-that-be would have no choice but to legalize it.

Smoking pot is still illegal but Emery’s campaign was colourful and effective: he’s staged rallies, founded a political party, a magazine and claims to have helped grow 1.1 million pounds of marijuana in the United States through his seed-selling business.
This week, the empires finished striking back. In the culmination of four-year legal extradition battle that’s been a financial drain on him and even threatened his friends, Emery surrendered to Canadian authorities and, barring an unlikely act of mercy from the federal Conservatives, will be sent to Washington state to spend five years in jail. It’s part of a deal that Emery agreed to earlier this year in exchange for extradition charges being dropped against two of his colleagues.

Emery is 51. While Ian Mulgrew of the Vancouver Sun may have gone a little too far calling him Canada’s first ‘marijuana martyr’, five years hard time in a U.S. jail is a harsh punishment for what’s he’s done.

Of course, the Prince of Pot picked the fight but that fact only confirms the most salient point about Emery’s case: whatever its legal niceties, his incarceration is a purely politically-motivated act perpetrated by the U.S. government and abetted by Canadian authorities. As Paul Willcocks pointed out in 2005, police officers here could have turned down a DEA request to devote time and resources to the Emery extradition and prosecutors could have done likewise.

Instead Canadian police poured a year into aiding the U.S. effort, despite the fact the law Emery broke in this country - seed sales - has not been enforced since 1968 and despite a court ruling that an appropriate punishment for drug offences of his type is about a month in jail. Bush-era appointee and DEA boss Karen Tandy summed up why Emery was targeted succinctly, his arrest “a significant blow” to ” the marijuana legalizaiton movement … Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on.”

To recap, Emery thumbed his nose too often at the U.S., so, via the DEA, Uncle Sam beat him up while Canada helped hold his arms behind his back. And our government decided to use your tax dollars and your public servants in this noble cause.

So Goliath stomps on David and no surprises but thanks again to Mr. Emery for teaching an anesthetized Canadian populace another lesson in the price - and power - of dissent.

The Conservatives could try to have Emery serve his sentence in Canada but it’s doubtful - this is a government that continues to condone the seven years of torture the teenager Omar Khadr suffered in Guantanamo Bay. The case does however let out the flatulent nature of the Tory’s sovereignty noises; the hydrocarbons and minerals that lie under the Arctic Ocean are worthy of this nation’s protection and best efforts but Canada’s citizens are merely inconveniences to be sacrificed at the merest whiff of political expediency.

There’s more indignation and outrage to be wringed out of the Emery case but it would strident, hollow and weak; Emery is going to jail for his beliefs, while this editorialist is going to bed.

But perhaps it’s best to end on a defiant note and paraphrase that sage of the silver screen Richard Gere. Think about whatever you hate most about government - the HST, social cuts, the breaks for big business, the lying, the graft, the genial, patronizing, complacent corruption - and then think of all the times you were told you can’t fight city hall.

You can. Marc Emery did, for decades. Because two governments that control a pair of the most powerful countries on earth hate him - yet there he stands.

http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/

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