Marc Emery
Okt 2005 -
(The Seattle Times) - 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 Vancouver and Amsterdam, 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 U.S., 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 Nevada, Alaska and Arizona.
Emery contends a news release issued July 29, the day of his arrest, reveals the U.S. 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 United States and Canada."
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 U.S. 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 Seattle."
"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 Canada's largest supplier of seeds and marijuana-growing equipment, and because the majority of his customers were U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. government, Canadian prosecutors are working to force Emery and co-defendants Michelle Rainey-Fenkarek and Gregory Williams to appear in Seattle 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 U.S. — up to life in prison.
"I face a penalty longer than what you'd get for multiple murder in Canada," 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 Canada and that "life in prison" means the defendant is generally eligible for parole after seven years, except in murder cases.
British Columbia 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 Vancouver 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 Canada."
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 Canada.
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 Vancouver.
Next door to Emery's B.C. Marijuana Party headquarters on West Hastings Street, toward the back of the New Amsterdam Cafe, is a designated "smoke room" where patrons smoke marijuana and tobacco weekdays until 4:30 p.m.
Smoking is confined to the room during normal work hours to be "respectful" of neighboring businesses, an employee said. But after 4:30 p.m. 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.
Campbell 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
Sept 2005
- If you were the guy everyone called the prince of pot and the U.S. drug czar came to town rattling his saber, you'd probably have the sense to stay out of his way. At the very least, you wouldn't go out of your way to antagonize him, let alone pay $500 for the privilege. But that's exactly what Marc Emery did. Emery is a Canadian entrepreneur who presided over the world's largest marijuana seed sales business. In November 2002, when John Walters came to Vancouver, Emery bought a table at a Board of Trade luncheon, invited nine friends along, and-after nearly tricking Walters into posing for a photo with him-mercilessly heckled the czar (whose speech warned the Canadians about the errors of their drug-tolerant ways) before heading outside to spark up a fatty.
In July, after 10 years of watching as Emery sent seeds across the border, webcast his antiprohibition rants from the HQ of the British Columbia Marijuana Party ("Overgrow the Government") on Pot-TV, and mailed out Cannabis Culture, the bimonthly he edits, U.S. drug warriors finally struck back. Acting at their behest, the Canadian police busted Emery in Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia, where he was due to appear at Hemp Fest 2005, on a three-count indictment filed by the U.S. attorney's office after an 18-month investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Emery, 47, and two associates were charged with conspiracy to produce and sell marijuana, as well as money laundering-crimes that could carry life sentences.
I first met Emery just after the drug-czar incident and his second run to be Vancouver's mayor. Swaggering through "Vansterdam," the neighborhood of cannabis cafés and head shops that he helped establish, Emery seemed to have walked out of the pages of the Ayn Rand books he discovered when he was 21 (around the time he discovered pot) or the superhero comics he sold in his first business, started when he was 13. Both Howard Roark and Spider-Man, he told me then, "had this total obsession with doing the right thing. I really related to these misunderstood people who had so much power."
This August, released on a $50,000 bond, he was still obsessed, speaking in his customary rat-a-tat about the "real reason" for his arrest: the millions of dollars he says he's given to antiprohibition causes over the years. "My money went everywhere, spreading a revolution through retail," he said. "It was the engine for worldwide activism against U.S. drug policy."
"I've given his 'movement' no thought," says Todd Greenberg, the assistant U.S. attorney in Seattle prosecuting the case. "Emery's criminal activities are the only focus of this case," he added, citing as justification the fact that 75 percent of Emery's seeds go to American customers. But Greenberg's attempt to distance Emery's arrest from drug-war politics was undermined by Karen Tandy, head of the DEA. On the day of Emery's bust, she proclaimed that it dealt a blow "not only to the marijuana trafficking trade.but also to the marijuana legalization movement," whose lobbyists, she added, "now have one less pot of money to rely on."
"She makes it clear that her objective was to cripple the movement," says John Conroy, who leads Emery's defense team and plans to use Tandy's statement to fight his extradition. Under the Extradition Act, Canada is not obligated to surrender a citizen if to do so would be unjust or oppressive. (Canada limits sentences for cannabis production to a maximum of seven years.) Last year, Emery served 60 days for passing a joint at a concert, but Canada has largely tolerated his business-and taken his money: He pays about $80,000 a year in income taxes, listing "marijuana seed vendor" as his occupation on his return. Conroy believes Emery's arrest is both personal ("It smacks of his being an effective pain in the ass to the drug warriors," he says) and political-an attempt by the U.S. to signal its displeasure at Canada's liberal drug policies. The country has legalized medical pot, is flirting with federal decriminalization, and was the first nation to approve a cannabis extract called Sativex for prescription use. Many Canadians agree-a poll found that 58 percent oppose Emery's extradition, and the arrest, which was front-page news in Canada, triggered an avalanche of letters to the editor and op-eds criticizing what one columnist called "an outrageous infringement of Canadian sovereignty."
Awaiting his extradition hearing (Conroy reckons the process will take years), Emery says he's out of money and out of business. His website now offers grim warnings about an "escalation of the Drug War" instead of seeds of "White Widow" and "Diesel" varietals. But he seems certain that if he loses his extradition battle, it will be his ticket into the superhero pantheon. "The DEA is losing the war for hearts and minds. They figure they can wipe out the movement by getting rid of this one guy. They're going to give life in Supermax to a guy who isn't even in trouble with his own people," Emery says. "They will make a martyr out of me."
Gary Greenberg is a psychotherapist, college professor of psychology, and occasional journalist. His writing on science and public policy has appeared in The New Yorker , Rolling Stone , and Harper's
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