Free Marc Emery

By: Maria Cichosz, The Varsity

 

Marc Emery, Canada’s self-proclaimed “Prince of Pot,” is set to be sentenced in a United States Federal Court on September 10. Emery was extradited to the U.S. on May 20, 2010, to serve a five-year prison term for the sale of marijuana seeds over the Internet. Canadian police worked with the U.S.’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to have Emery extradited and charged under America’s vastly more severe drug laws rather than having him serve his prison term in his home country. Emery’s extradition to a foreign country to serve a sentence for activities that took place on domestic soil raises questions not only about prohibition and drug policy issues, but also about Canada’s ability to act as a sovereign nation and protect its own citizens.

 

Marc Emery Direct Marijuana Seeds openly sold seeds through online mail order from 1994 to 2005. Emery practiced a great deal of transparency in his business, accurately declaring the source of his income and paying all provincial and federal taxes. Though Emery’s store was raided for selling seeds on multiple occasions, Canadian courts repeatedly sentenced him only to fines and no prison time. In Canada, seed sellers face a $200 fine and one month in jail. U.S. penalties are much harsher, and if Emery is not sentenced to the five-year prison term agreed upon in his plea bargain, he faces 30 years to life in the American prison system.

 

Though the distribution of seeds is illegal in Canada, no case has been prosecuted for decades and Canadian businesses similar to Emery’s are allowed to operate with little state interference. What makes Emery’s case unique is the fact that the profits from his business were routinely used to fund anti-drug war and anti-prohibition activism worldwide and within the U.S. The DEA press release issued upon Emery’s arrest confirmed that the motivation for his arrest and extradition was mainly political and intended to deal a “significant blow” to “drug legalization lobbyists.” Emery’s admittedly illegal business had no American branches, no American employees, and he never set foot in the U.S. Despite this and despite being a Canadian citizen, he is being extradited to a foreign country to serve a prison term far harsher than any he would have received in a Canadian court.

 

Whether or not one agrees with Emery’s practices, activism, and drug law reform efforts, it remains clear that his extradition represents our country’s failure to protect its citizens and administer its laws within its own borders. Bending under American pressure to make an example of Emery in the political context of a costly, ineffective, and increasingly unpopular war on drugs, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson’s extradition order is representative of Canada’s inability to stand independently of U.S. policy and pressure. If Emery is to serve time for his seed sales, he should do so on Canadian soil and under Canadian law, not as a “criminal alien” who has limited rights within the U.S. prison system.

 

Emery’s extradition is unnerving because it demonstrates our government’s willingness to hand over its citizens to a foreign country when their actions and beliefs are not in agreement with that country’s policies. Clearly, the safety of citizens is not as important to the Canadian government as compliance with American ideology and policy. This is a case in which the alleged legality or illegality of Emery’s actions is far less relevant than the Canadian government’s response to them. Our justice system should not be outsourced on demand.If Emery has committed illegal actions in Canada, he should be prosecuted under Canadian law. Ultimately, Emery’s extradition is a gross injustice done to a Canadian citizen who has never harmed anyone, and a clear violation of the rights and protections promised to citizens by our government. At this point in time, only Emery’s repatriation can serve as a sign of respect for Canadian sovereignty and the right to choose how laws are enforced within our own borders.

 

Business in Vancouver

 

With Marc Emery, B.C.’s leading marijuana activist, expected to receive a five-year jail sentence in the United States this Friday, his wife and fellow activist Jodie Emery is pointing to recent developments in the U.S.A.’s legalized marijuana movement as further evidence of the hypocrisy of the American and Canadian criminal codes.

 

“Five years after his initial arrest you have California looking to legalize marijuana this fall [and] you have the original prosecutor in his case saying that marijuana should be legalized,” Jodie told Business in Vancouver on Tuesday morning.

 

Jodie, who is the director of Cannabis Culture magazine and director-at-large for B.C.’s Green Party, also continues to claim that Marc’s arrest, which stemmed from the online sale of pot seeds from Canada into the U.S., was largely politically motivated.

 

“You have marijuana seed sellers going in and out of the U.S. to trade shows and talking about how many seeds they sell, but they aren’t being arrested or facing any lengthy prison terms.”

In a release Monday, Jodie added that though the Drug Enforcement Administration and the media have reported that Marc “made millions of dollars,” all of the money generated through seed sales was given away to activism groups and events.

 

“Marc started selling seeds with the explicit goal of funding the marijuana legalization movement, which he did tremendously well, to the tune of $4 million dollars over the decade he was in business,” she said. “He paid his income tax on seed sales, and operated openly and transparently.”

 

She said that “Free Marc Emery” rallies are being held in up to 60 cities around the world on September 18.

 

While Marc’s earlier plea bargain will likely result in his receiving a five-year sentence this Friday in a U.S. federal court in Seattle, Jodie Emery is looking to maintain public awareness of his plight in order to have him promptly transferred to a Canadian prison to serve his time.

 

She said if Emery, who is the leader of the BC Marijuana Party, can return to Canada to serve his sentence, he could be released on full-parole as early as November 2011.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This letter was written to be copied and sent to everyone who sends him mail so he doesn’t have to write it out repeatedly, but he still writes personal messages along with every letter he sends out.

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As of August 20th 2010, I will have been here 92 days. With the 70 days I spent in Canada awaiting extradition, that’s 162 days total time credited to my sentence. In the US prison system an inmate receives 15% off their sentence each year (54 days) in their sentence as a "good conduct time" credit. Of course, the rules can be severe in a US prison, and it takes effort not to be punished with loss of good time or solitary confinement. So, with 162 days in by August 20th, plus 270 days "good time" over 5 years, if I spent every single day of my 5-year sentence in the US system, my release date is mid-June 2014, or 3 years and 9.5 months away.

As a Canadian citizen (a "criminal alien") in the US system, I cannot qualify for designation to a minimum-security "camp" that my offense would normally fit under. I am only permitted in the next level up of security, a "Low". I also cannot get the 12-month sentence reduction American citizens in the system receive for the Residential Drug & Alcohol Rehabilitation Program (R-DAP), nor do I qualify for the early release to a halfway house six months prior to the end of sentence. However, once transferred to the Canadian Federal Corrections system, I qualify for accelerated parole.

My sentencing is actually September 10th in the Seattle Federal Court of Judge Martinez. The judge, the district attorney and myself, represented by the very able lawyer Richard Troberman, have agreed on a 5-year sentence in a procedure called an 11(c)1(c). It’s pretty well guaranteed, but nothing in a courtroom is really guaranteed so this is as close as it comes. There will be rallies in many cities on the day after my sentencing, September 18th, so stay tuned to www.FreeMarc.ca and www.CannabisCulture.com for details and updates.

Should everything go as expected in court on the 10th, I will be sentenced that day to a 5-year term. Depending on a Pre-Sentence Report compiled by the court, I should get designated to a "Low" Security Federal Correctional Institution (FCI or CI). This FCI could be anywhere in the United States, and I will be sent there some time in October, November, January or even February. (No prisoners are moved in December). It will be likely a roundabout journey involving a few stops on the way where I will be housed in an FDC like Sea-Tac until I reach my destination jail; it could take several weeks of buses and FDC’s just to get to where I am headed.

I would like to be designated to Terminal Island FCI in California, but Lompac FCI "Low" or Taft CI are more likely. Taft is a prison in the California desert that specializes in "Criminal aliens" – that is, non-US citizens in the system like me. There are 12 FCI "Lows" in the USA that specialize in "criminal aliens", two in California (California City and Taft), 4 in Texas, one each in New Mexico, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio. I can ask the judge to recommend a preferred place to be, relative to my wife Jodie’s ability to visit me, but the Bureau of Prisons reserves the right to send me to any prison in their system. You can find out about the Bureau of Prisons at their website www.bop.gov.

Immediately after my sentencing on September 10th, I will make an application to the Canadian Minister of Public Safety to serve my sentence in the Canadian Correctional system. Canada and the US have a treaty whereby each country promises to repatriate their nationals that are convicted in the others’ criminal justice system. The process involves me applying to Canada first, and then, when I reach my designated prison in the US, making my US application. The decision in Canada is with the Minister of Public Safety, currently Mr. Vic Toews, and he will have my application on his desk by late September.

If you are Canadian, I need your help! Please write to:

The Honourable Vic Toews
Parliament Hill, Suite 306, Justice Building
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

Urge him to repatriate Marc Emery. Impress on him that I am a good Canadian who has made many valuable contributions to Canadian life, that I love my country, and will not be selling seeds at any time in the future. Add your own personal reasons relating to my worthiness in being brought into the Canadian corrections system. Be polite and not too long. Put your complete name and address on the letter. This letter should be sent to him as soon as possible in August, September or October. Ask your Member of Parliament to send a letter to Mr. Toews urging the Hon. Minister Toews to repatriate me.

Once I am back in the Canadian system, I will qualify for full parole by Christmas 2011, and it is possible I could celebrate Christmas with my beloved wife if you and all those you know take the time and effort to write Mr. Toews a good letter. Your support here is SO VALUABLE and IMPORTANT to my future! It’s actually the law that Canada has to repatriate its citizens from US jails under this treaty, and the only grounds for refusal are 1) being a member of organized crime, 2) being a threat to the public safety, and 3) likely to commit the offense again. One of the important points about me is that in 5 years of bail (August 2005 to May 2010), I never violated my commitment to not sell seeds in that time, and can be counted on to abide by my commitments in my parole and post-parole period IF I am repatriated to Canada.

Once I am designated to a US FCI, I can, and will, make application to the US Bureau of Prisons for transfer to Canada. The US, when they approve such applications, does so usually within 3-5 months of application. Canada takes back prisoners 3 times yearly, publishing a list issued by The Minister of Public Safety. The US Bureau of Prisons, a division of the US Justice Department, makes its decision in conjunction with the prosecuting District Attorney, and any victims (none in my case).

My American supporters are urged to send a letter to the Bureau of Prisons at the Justice Department in Washington, DC, urging my transfer to the Canadian Corrections system as soon as the possible.

Attn: Canadian Inmate Treaty Transfer section
Federal Bureau of Prisons
320 First St., NW
Washington, DC 20534

If all goes well and I am accepted by both countries for transfer, I could find myself in the Canadian system by late summer of 2011, and on full parole (under current Canadian law, which is unfortunately under threat of being changed by the Conservative government of Canada) by November or December 2011, or January 2012.

The more support I receive in letters to the Canadian and American officials, the better chance I have of repatriation, so please write a letter. It doesn’t have to be long or complex, it just needs to demonstrate that citizens want me sent home.

Not much changes here in my life, so my routine has to keep me busy and motivated!

I get up at 5:45 am each morning and go down to the computer room. That’s because the inmate email service, which costs $3.50 an hour, comes alive at 6:00 am. I am usually the first waiting! Jodie sends me an overnight email telling me how much she loves me and all the things she did in the previous day and what her plans are for this day. It’s usually a wonderful comprehensive and information packed email of politics, business, personal stories, support, and addressing my many questions and requests for money, books, information, news.

I have 30 email contacts, the maximum allowed, and I rely on them to write me an email as often as they can. Sometimes they write, "You haven’t written me recently" as an excuse for why THEY haven’t written, but in jail not much changes, each day is virtually the same, so I have, in effect, over several days, nothing new to write about EXCEPT reacting to their lives as they share them with me. In the real world, decisions are made, things happen, travel, restaurants, work, love, sex, disappointment, joy, sunny days, stormy days, money matters, family, all these things HAPPEN to people on the outside. There is little going on here but my daily routine, which I’ll shortly describe to you. I’m not going to travel, there will be no change in my diet, there will be no sex, I’m not going to see the sun or the rain, makes friends of my own choosing, etc. My life has one purpose here, to be as productive as possible in extremely restrictive circumstances so as not to fall into despair from loneliness and boredom. The only distraction I have is you, my dear correspondent. The quality of your email or letter to me has a great bearing on how my day is. The only reaction I can have is from photos, articles, letters, news, and information from the outside world. That’s my ONLY stimulation here, reacting to the input of friends and correspondents.

Well, not quite the only stimulation. I do about 3 to 4 hours of email everyday, largely to Jodie and my close friends and associates. I write editorials, do interviews (through letters and emails), and work on projects like my 2010 Canadian Voters Guide to Defeat the Conservatives and a book of my cannabis activist career, tentatively called ‘Overgrowing The World, My Cannabis Revolution’. I receive three newspapers daily when the mail arrives at around 3:30 pm: USA Today, Seattle Times and the wonderful New York Times. I have 9 magazine subscriptions: Reason, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, National Geographic, the Economist, Rolling Stone, MacLean’s, Harper’s, and Mojo. My favorite is MacLean’s because it is efficient in keeping me informed (albeit from the conservative perspective most times) about Canadian news and politics. The Economist is next most useful. Rolling Stone and The Atlantic are very readable. I really haven’t had enough time to read National Geographic, but it is very popular amongst the inmates who I lend the magazines to. I have a nice collection of books and graphic novels. In jail I have read Alan Moore’s WATCHMEN twice, PROMETHEA (best graphic novel ever done, all six volumes), Tom Gordon (Vol. 1 & 2), with Top 10 and SWAMP THING still to go. Still to read are Nelson Mandela’s Autobiography, the Philosophy of Gandhi, and The Noam Chomsky Reader. I finished the magnificent book ‘Parting the Waters’, a remarkably well-researched book on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. This is just the first volume of a three-volume set, each volume is 1,000 pages thick! It’s by Taylor Branch and is truly a wonderful, inspiring history that I read every night from 11 pm to 2 am by my battery-operated booklight. I received volume 2, ‘Pillar of Fire’, and will get volume 3 after I finish volume 2. I finished and greatly enjoyed Christopher Hitchens’ erudite and extremely literate memoirs ‘Hitch-22’. I also have his ‘god Is Not Great’ book to read. I finished the expose of the Christian fundamentalism that permeates the Conservative party of Canada and the Canadian government in ‘The Armageddon Factor’ by Marci McDonald.

I only get 300 minutes per month of phone use, so that limits me to call just Jodie 10 minutes a day over 30 days, but I use 15 minutes a day on days when Jodie doesn’t visit me, so that’s 22 days a month I call her. Jodie visits me twice each weekend while I am at SeaTac FDC, which is a very time consuming and expensive effort on her behalf. If you want to contribute any money so I can see my beloved wife, give Jodie a donation to help her afford to visit me, it costs about $600 every weekend for her to see me twice, and it’s a struggle to find that money! (Email JodieEmery@gmail.com if you want to help!)

Only relatives or spouses can visit here at FDC Sea-Tac, so Jodie is my only permissible visitor. She visits me on the Fridays to Monday on even numbered days so, for example, she is visiting on Friday August 20th in the afternoon, and Sunday August 22nd in the early morning. She is speaking at the Seattle Hempfest that particular weekend, meeting activists and enthusiasts of the cannabis culture, and seeing me. This is the most exciting part of my life for sure! It’s a 2-hour contact visit so when we first meet I grab Jodie around the waist and swing her around and kiss her for a passionate 30 seconds. It’s electric! It’s like getting married each time! It’s so thrilling! Then after our intense embrace and kiss, we sit opposite each other and hold hands the entire time (which I love) and our faces are about 6 inches away and we talk, talk, talk and that 2 hours goes by lovingly but quick. But it sure is heaven for me. Jodie always wears a beautiful dress and I think she looks so magnificent. When she leaves I can kiss her for 30 seconds, and oh I do! It’s a little bittersweet when she leaves but I know I will see her in two days or no longer than a week later. She stays just down the road at a nearby hotel until she takes the airplane back to Vancouver after the second visit of the weekend. I cherish every visit! When I am moved to an FCI elsewhere in America, it will cost much more money and take up even more travel time so Jodie will only be able to visit me every second week, but it will be two or three days in a row on the weekends she does visit.

The computer in the email room has no cut & paste, or any function other than straight typing of a Corrlinks email. I can’t forward emails. I can’t access the internet. But it’s still a wonderful thing. I suspect the $3.50 an hour the BOP charges me for it barely covers the cost of their staff screening my emails. All letters in and out, all emails and all phone calls (except to my lawyer) are screened by BOP staff. They haven’t censored anything, but I was put in solitary confinement for 21 days on June 4 for allegedly breaking a rule on the phone, which I was not aware of (making a podcast) and did not even find in the rulebook here, nor was 21 days in the grueling deprivation of solitary a justified punishment, in my opinion. Nonetheless, rules here can have severe consequences if broken. I did not lose any of my good time though, and since being released from SHU (Special Housing Unit) solitary confinement on June 25, I have not had even a write up, so I do try to obey all rules when I am aware of them.

Phone calls to Jodie cost 35 cents a minute. The postage stamps they sell me for letters are the ‘Liberty Bell’ universal 44-cent stamp (two for Canada) and I can only buy 20 a week. It is unsurpassable irony that a political prisoner as I am has to purchase ‘Liberty Bell’ postage stamps to send my letters from jail. Oh these United States of America! It’s like the license plates of New Hampshire that say ‘Live Free or Die’ on them, while they are made by prisoners at the state jail in Concord, New Hampshire!

I do email from 6 am to 6:40 am, I still manage to get my two breakfast milks and down them just before morning lockdown, from 6:40 am to 8:00 am when we are locked in our cells. I, like virtually every other inmate, go back to sleep. Lately I’ve been sleeping to 10 am, waking up too late for the showers, which are available 3 times daily (8-10 am, 1:30-3:30 pm, 7:30-9:30 pm). I go check email from 10 am to 10:45, at which time we have lunch. Today lunch was canned vegetables, beans and two cheese sandwiches plus a small salad of onion, tomato and lettuce. After lunch I read the newspapers I received from the day before, and any magazines I’ve received that I haven’t finished. Then we get locked down from 12:15 to 1:15 pm, and I start writing my replies to mail. Any correspondents will get this letter plus a handwritten reply to their specific questions and comments. This permits me to not have to write the same basic information I have done in the previous 200 letters I have written from Sea-Tac FDC so far since I arrived here on May 20.

I usually point out that I consider myself a political prisoner, because the chief of DEA specifically stated this in her letter to the media and public on the day of my arrest in July 29, 2005, when DEA and RCMP had me arrested just prior to a speech I was giving at the Maritimers United for Medical Marijuana festival in Laurencetown, Nova Scotia. The head of DEA (US Drug Enforcement Administration) proudly proclaimed:

“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.

“His marijuana trade and propagandist marijuana magazine have generated nearly $5 million a year in profits that bolstered his trafficking efforts, but those have gone up in smoke today.

“Emery and his organization had been designated as one of the Attorney General’s most wanted international drug trafficking organizational targets — one of only 46 in the world and the only one from Canada.

“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. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on.” (See the original document here)

Her entire statement talks about my politics, money to legalization groups, my "propagandist" magazine. At no point are any victims identified, nor have there ever been any victims or identification of victims. No other person brought before a US court has been tried exclusively for seeds.

No other Canadian seed seller (and there have been over 150 in Canada over the last 10 years) has been sought for extradition. Only one Canadian seed seller has even gone to jail in Canada, for one month, and that was for a huge quantity, three pounds of seeds, along with corresponding sales ads in High Times Magazine and marijuana samples of each strain seized – that was Daniel Anthony Kostantin in March 2008, as reported in the Vancouver Sun. Even the owner of Heaven’s Stairway, accused in Montreal of exporting seeds to the US, and convicted in March 2010 received 2 years house arrest, no prison time at all! So this 5 year sentence I have received in the US, aided and abetted by my extradition by the Canadian Justice Minister, is punishment solely based on my massive $4,000,000 in contributions to the cannabis liberation movement from 1995 to 2005, and my endless speeches in documentaries, television specials, Canada-wide tours (2003 – Summer of Legalization Tour, 2004 – Canadian University Tour) and articles, editorials and my brazen seed catalog in my "propagandist" magazine Cannabis Culture. I was put on the radar as far back as the front page article on me Dec. 5, 1995 in the Wall Street Journal, "Pot Seed Merchant, winked at By Police, Prospers in Canada". Then when CNN did a special on me in September 1997, on "Impact, with Bernard Shaw" in a long, in-depth segment titled "Canada Cannabis", it came to the attention of US and Canadian officials, and I was raided shortly afterward (but still remained in business). Articles lauding my work (I have only ever received negative coverage in the National Enquirer of December 1996) have appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine (April 1998), New York Times (September 2005), Washington Post (summer 2006), CBS 60 Minutes (2006), The Economist (August 2000), Time Magazine (2000), MTV (2003), National Geographic (2009 – Explorer, "Inside Marijuana"), Australian Broadcast Corporation’s 60 Minutes (2007), in documentaries "Escape to Canada", "The Union" "Prince of Pot" "Principle of Pot" and numerous others available on Youtube and found by Google. I have been interviewed by the Times of India, and media in Norway, Finland, Slovenia, Czech Republik, the Netherlands, Mexico and numerous other countries.

In the afternoon I write letters, check my email mid-day and then receive my mail – newspapers, magazines, books and letters – around 3 pm. We are locked down from 3:40 pm to 4:30 pm. It’s dinner time when we get out at 4:30 to 4:45 pm. In lockdown, I usually continue to write letters, leaving newspapers, magazines to read in the evening lockdown from 9:40 (lockdown) to about 11 pm, when lights go out and then I read my current book with booklight from 11 am to 2 am. I call Jodie once a day (when not a visitation day) between 7:30 pm and 9:15 pm, for 15 minutes. Use of phones and email stop at 9:40 pm lockdown.

My cell is shared with another ‘cellie’, the name we use for the other inmate who shares the 12′ x 7′ cell that has a washbasin and toilet, two lockers, a double bunk, and a desk & chair. It’s all made of steel, though we have two plastic chairs in the cell for fellow inmate visitors or just a more comfortable seat instead of the bunk bed. There are 63 cells, the maximum capacity in this unit, DB, is 125 men, but the usual is 85-105 men. The unit is shaped like a triangle, measuring 80′ x 70′ x 60′, with two stories. The upper story is used like an exercise track by most inmates, 21 laps equals one mile. The lower level has 4 raised televisions, one for Spanish language programming for the 45 or so Mexicans/Hispanic Americans, the other 3 are news, entertainment and various shows in English or with English subtitles. You hear the television over portable Sony radios you can buy from commissary for $45, and you buy Koss headphones for $34 to listen to either the radio or TV, so it’s not audible for anyone to hear on the range without headphones. Also on the range are 20 tables with 4 seats attached to each, the C.O.’s quarters (the C.O. is the on-duty Correctional Officer/guard) is a 9′ x 9′ structure where he or she works and monitors the range.

We don’t ever get to go outside, there is no ‘yard’ here at an FDC (pre-trial detention center) – ‘yards’ are only at the designated jail or prison you get sent to after sentencing. There is a gymnasium for playing basketball or volleyball, it’s a concrete floor and in my opinion leads to injury, but the air in the gym is through a grating to the outside, so it’s fresh air. There are no weights here, but the inmates do a lot of improvised exercises throughout the range and in the gym. I sure do miss going outside and feeling the warming, satisfying rays of the sun.

I am the only inmate in the unit on a no-flesh diet, a poor mans ‘vegetarian’ diet that usually lacks any fresh vegetables, except recently, for the first time in 75 days, I had a fresh vegetable feast for my dinner, 5 green pepper slices, 5 tomato wedges, 4 broccoli pieces, 2 cauliflower pieces, 3 cherry tomatoes, medium cheddar cheese (real thing!) and 3 hard boiled eggs. It was spectacular. It has never been that good. I felt really healthy that day, but such a fresh vegetable tray like that is extremely rare! Normally, the meals are considerably underwhelming in taste and nutrition, the diet is repetitious and discouraging. But I eat any apples, bananas, and oranges and grapefruits we get, that’s for sure. In fact, I eat whatever I get!

Once a week we put all our clothes worn in the previous week in laundry bags with our name on it and put them in a laundry bin and later that day they come back washed. We have to iron the t-shirts, trousers, and smocks after we get our laundry back, otherwise they look very wrinkled. Our clothing issuance is 7 pair of socks, 7 pair of underwear, 3 trousers, 3 smocks, 6 t-shirts. We also have our bed linen washed each week, but they get returned pressed.

I have three photo albums full of photos, one album is sexy and beautiful pictures of Jodie, which I look at every day, another is an album of Jodie and sometimes Jodie & I, doing political activity, and a third album are photos from supporters wearing their FREE MARC shirts or holding up FREE MARC signs throughout the world. I have more photos of Jodie and supporters so I am getting two more photo albums next week from commissary.

One of the most satisfying things to get in the mail are photos of my correspondents doing FREE MARC activism in their hometown. Most every letter I get says “I support you”, but to me, a photo is proof that their support is real and has become action. Action is the only real support there is. Letter writing, holding a FREE MARC sign at a major intersection, concert, rally or sports event, wearing a FREE MARC t-shirt, composing a FREE MARC song – this is genuine support, and any picture or photo is very satisfying proof.

The Commissary is the inmate store. We put in orders on Monday, and on Tuesday we get the items back. We can spend $320 a month at the commissary, and I usually reach my maximum. Monthly costs are $320 for commissary, $350 for email, $105 for phone calls, $100 for newspaper subscriptions, total $875, which is a burden on Jodie unless I get donations from supporters, which fortunately I do. The Government of Canada garnisheed most of my money, and of any money I could earn, 80% is seized by the Government to pay back taxes, interest and penalties. Currently I have no employment source of income as a result of my incarceration, so I do rely greatly on the kindness of strangers, to quote the play ‘Streetcar Named Desire’.

From the commissary I get razor blades, shave cream, soap, floss picks, tuna packs, tortillas, pens, stationery, postage stamps, oatmeal, the radio/headphones, calcium tablets, vitamin E, aspirin, shampoo, photo albums, etc. I spend about $70 a week on those kinds of items. Some supporters want to donate to my prison commissary to make my time here more comfortable, so if you’d like to contribute, you can deposit funds directly into my account by using Western Union (the "Quick Collect Form") and filling in the following information:

You can also send money to Jodie for her to deposit into my account if you’re not able to get to Western Union, or you can even donate to her for travel fees, as I love nothing more than seeing her and it’s really helpful to have assistance with the cost of flying and staying in hotels to visit me. Email JodieEmery@gmail.com or send mail to Jodie Emery, 307 West Hastings Street, Vancouver BC, V6B 1H6, Canada.

If an inmate has a medical issue, it takes time to get attention here so you have to stay in good health on your own. When I had an abscessed toe (from picking with my fingers and not using nail clippers that I have from commissary; lesson learned), I put in a cop-out (that’s what requests to staff are called) and requested oil of oregano to put in the abscessed area, which I know from my doctor in Vancouver and personal experience is very effective. You soak the toe in really hot water for 30 minutes 4 times a day for two days and by the second days it softens the area up, then you break open the area easily and drain the pus, put it back in the hot salted water, and then put oil of oregano in the open wound. Jodie was worried so she told me to just start soaking my foot in hot salted water even without the oil of oregano, so a day after I put the cop-out in I started soaking it in hot water, broke the area open the next day, drained the pus, immersed it in really hot salted water, kept it clean and dry and it was completely healed within 24 hours. Nine days after putting in my request, I was finally called to the doctor’s office to hear they only have antibiotics for that kind of thing and don’t have oil of oregano – which, fortunately, I was not in need of any longer. Medical attention improves somewhat once you are sent to the designated jail after sentencing, so I hear.

One final request! Nothing makes me feel better than knowing you might be helping me in my cause! Campaigning against Bill S-10 (mandatory minimum prison time for cannabis) in Canada, working to pass Proposition 19 in California, getting out to vote in both countries, supporting ballot initiatives for medical marijuana, all these things delight me when you write me about your ACTION! When you wear your FREE MARC shirts (available at www.cannabisculture.com/store), write the Minister of Public Safety or the Bureau of Prisons at the US Justice Dept, or hold a sign up or a rally on my behalf, then that is the best news I will receive all day.

Please visit the website FreeMarc.ca or www.CannabisCulture.com to see the latest news and postings about my situation.

To write to me by mail send your letters, photos and clippings to:

Marc Scott Emery, #40252086, Unit DB
Sea-Tac FDC
Box 13900
Seattle, WA
98198-1090
USA

I will answer your specific questions and comments by hand along with this printed letter, so thank you for writing me and I look forward to hearing about what you’ve done for freedom lately, and the cause of cannabis liberation!

Marc Scott Emery

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The following exclusive interview, recorded by rabble.ca, took place between Libby Davies, MP for Vancouver East, and Marc and Jodie Emery in January 2010 in Vancouver, days before his extradition was expected to take place. Marc, 52, was extradited to the US on May 20th to serve a five-year prison sentence for shipping marijuana seeds to Americans. This far-ranging interview covers the reasons for Emery’s extradition, the war on drugs, Canadian sovereignty, and Marc’s previous experience in prison.

Q – This is my first visit to the new Woodward’s development. It is amazing to look at the big photograph from the Gastown riots.

That is from 1971, August 7th. What happened is Doug McLeod from The Georgia Straight put an ad in, that there was going to be a human be-in, and a smoke-in, on that Saturday, August 7th, because the police had made a lot of busts, and so the head of the Georgia Straight at that time thought there should be a protest, albeit a peace one, about that.

The mayor at the time, Tom Campbell, had the rally, which started around 1 p.m. At 7 p.m. there were 1,000 people there, and over 150 police officers entered the intersection of the four streets on horseback and wielding clubs and using tear gas. By the end of the night over 100 people were hospitalized.

Strangely enough, from that event came a great period of tolerance in Vancouver. The Davie Street community really rapidly developed after that. Marijuana became much more socially acceptable on 4th Avenue in Kitslano and the new areas of Vancouver because there was a reaction to it. It was so violent and so excessive — so covered. Journalists were hit too on the street that night. Business owners on the street were hit by the police. So it tended to have a very beneficial effect in the aftermath, that it made Vancouver very tolerant in all areas for fear of overreaction.

Now unfortunately we’ve gotten far away from that so we see more and more behaviour on the part of the authorities that has a violent note to it.

 

Q- Were you there at the time?

No. I only learned about it through a comic book called Harold Head, which was done by a fellow called Rand Holmes who was of these parts. He died recently. He would chronicle in the Georgia Straight every week and then finally comic books were put out. And that is where I first heard of it.

Q – It is kind of ironic that we would meet here because of that issue and what we are meeting to discuss today. The following year I began working in the Downtown Eastside, what was still called Skid Road then, and we started the citizen movement to fight the slum landlords and to gain people’s housing rights. That was in 1972. Dera started in 1973, so I remember the so-called Gastown riots. The first thing I want to ask you Marc, and thank you very much for agreeing to sit down and talk… If you think about your life, you have always been a very active fellow…

Since the age of 10, when I pounded in signs for Alec Richmond, the NDP candidate in London East in 1968. My dad was in the United Autoworkers which is now called the CAW. My dad eventually became the union president of the Machinist Union (of UAW), so that is when I was 10 years old, going out pounding in signs for this NDP candidate. A fellow named Charlie Turner won, and there began a long string of defeats in my electoral career. So I’m always tilting at windmills and going for the ideals.

Q – Had you thought, even 10 years ago, that we would be sitting here today, with you facing extradition? Would you have ever contemplated that this is where this path would take you?

I don’t know if I would have embraced it as much as I do now in the sense that I think the work is so necessary. Ten years ago, I’d probably… I was still frightened of jail. I first went to jail for opposing the Sunday shopping laws, and I wouldn’t pay the fine they gave me so they put you in jail if you don’t pay find and that was 22 years ago, in 1988. So, I was really scared and I was just in jail for five days that first time, for Sunday shopping.

And then I was put in jail for three months in 2004 for passing a joint in Saskatoon. Then I started to have a lot of epiphanies in my jail experiences. First, everyone confesses to me, both jail guards and all the inmates spend a lot time talking telling me about their life. In a way everyone treats me differently like I’m a sensitive artist or something, because I’m often on TV when I’m in jail, or they are aware of my work. I’ve cried in jail, sometimes when talking to Jodie on the phone. And you are never really comfortable crying in jail because toughies will see you as vulnerable, weak, exploitable. For me, inmates overlooked it and actually just said, "You must be having a difficult day because you don’t belong here."

Q – Let’s start where things are at right now. You are waiting for the actual decision about extradition to be made, and assuming that the federal justice minister approves the extradition, and you will be exiting Canada very shortly and heading to a U.S. jail.

As early as Monday morning I would think. The date for more for lawyer submission is January 8, this Friday. After that the Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson, can have the extradition order signed and I’ll be delivered to a place call SeaTac, by the Seattle airport, and then sentenced to a five-year sentence within a couple of months, and then sent to a U.S. federal penitentiary. Could be anywhere in the America, and it will probably be one designated for aliens as opposed to a minimum-security designation for Americans that would allow me to be on a work farm. I won’t have that opportunity. I’ll be with a lot of Central American and Mexicans and the irony there that a lot of them will be gang members. That is the difficulty that Canadians in California City Prison are having. In California, many of the Central Americans are associated to gangs and they battle each other even in jail, and have a lot of hostilities. The Canadians in jail, who aren’t really involved in these inter-gang rivalries, worry about getting caught in the crossfire.

Q – We have made a number of interventions for you. I can’t remember how many justice ministers I’ve talked to, because they keep changing, but most recently to try and get the Canadian government to agree that you should be able to serve your time in Canada instead of being extradited. As a preferable thing, than you being removed from Jodie and your family and your support community. But I gather you don’t hold out much hope for that.

That is not necessarily true. I’m not the kind of person over whom the government would suffer a loss of face by bringing me back to Canada. They often claim that we can’t bring people back because they are threats to national security, members of organized crime. Well, you know a lot of people might think that’s a good thing. So that is up for debate.

But there is no question that I have no association with organized crime. I haven’t hurt anybody. There is no victim here. It is clearly a kind of Bush era persecution. So under the current treaty agreements Canada has with the U.S., I could be transferred back to Canada immediately if the Canadian government were to acquiesce. I’ll put in a transfer as soon as I arrive in a federal penitentiary. My request for a transfer back to Canada will arrive on the Public Safety Minister’s desk by January 2011 at the earliest. They will usually let it go six months or so before they approve it, but they can approve it at any time. But now applications for transfer back to Canada are taking on average 14 to 16 months, and are requiring lawyers like John Conroy to sue the government to expedite the process.

That is part of the Conservative government’s culture war, of obstruction. They are renouncing all the kind of liberties and freedoms of social justice built up over the past 40 years. They are not anxious to take back the marijuana smugglers. Typically the Canadians in American prisons are smugglers.

It’s an unfortunate aspect of the Conservative government that they want to repeal that treaty legislation in the next session, so they are not longer obligated to repatriate Canadians.

 

Q – I know there have been other cases where the Canadian government has abandoned Canadians abroad.

America is changing so quickly, itself, too. California is going to have a vote on legalizing marijuana for adults. We could be in the ironic situation where I will be in a U.S. federal penitentiary in a state that will have legalized marijuana and will be taxing it and regulating it.

Q – So what does all this say? You’ve gone through this incredible process. The DEA came, marked you, you got arrested, and for five years now you been going through this. Here you are on the point of extradition. What does it say about our drug policy and our relationship with the US?

Well, it is a hint for the future. The Canadian government and the U.S. government are getting so integrated — and it is almost such that you have to be come integrated with them or you can’t do business with them… What they are doing there is unsustainable, on so many levels. The drug war is certainly unsustainable, and the US drug war is much worse than in Canada; we can see that by the hundreds of violent paramilitary SWAT police raids on Americans in their homes in the media daily.

Q – What point are the US and Conservative government here trying to demonstrate by your arrest and extradition?

It is a culture war. They are trying to intimidate people. We gave away over $4 million in total over ten years from 1995 to 2005, about $500,000 each year, to all kinds of organizations, activist groups, and political parties. We gave a quarter of a million dollars to a drug addiction clinic, and what have you. These were great donations that were meant to kickstart and advance a worldwide movement, and the DEA was aware of that. DEA has a mandate to attack any effort to legalize cannabis, they have offices here in Canada to spy on Canadians, and were closely monitoring my extensive activities and contributions. The Canadian Ministry of Justice under the Liberals were colluding with DEA and the US Justice Dept. to have me outsourced to the hardball  US justice from October 2003 onward, almost two years before the US came to arrest me in Canada. The Vancouver police under Chief Jamie Graham (now Chief of Police in Victoria, BC), failing to get me charged in Canada, directly colluded with the Vancouver branch of DEA to have me out of this country from October 2003 to the day of my arrest. Both the Ministry of Justice in Ottawa and the Vancouver police Dept. were actively engaged in the sabotage of Canadian sovereignty. After my arrest, the Conservatives continued this treasonous assault of the nation’s sovereignty and a Canadian citizen. We were giving money to organizations all around the world for advertising, political parties, rallies, marches, Supreme Court challenges (in Canada in Dec. 2003 to legalize marijuana), class action lawsuits against the US government in regard to its federal medical marijuana program – or rather, the lack thereof. So eventually, [there were] court cases in Canada and in the United States. We even gave money to peace conferences, like at Jerusalem University for a peace conference between Arabs and Jews. So we were involved in every kind of philanthropy and it bothered them. I am certain that is why I was targeted. DEA chief administrator Karen Tandy’s media release on the day of my arrest makes it shockingly obvious my arrest was for purely political reasons. Karen Tandy’s explicit statement from DEA on July 29, 2005 (the day of my arrest) is available at www.noextradition.net. There are many other seed sellers, but not ones as mouthy as I am. None of them are giving up money for political work. They are all pocketing. So it is interesting that in Canada no one else is being extradited for selling seeds, and no one is even being prosecuted. On my own block there are five other fellows selling seeds, and they are not being prosecuted. So I think what I was doing them annoyed them enough that they decided to come and get me.

Q – So they are making an example of you.

Well, also once you have an indictment, the process runs inexorably forward and deals with it. They came down from demanding 40 years to life sentence. DEA said I was in the top 50 most wanted drug traffickers in the world. For seeds! Sold from desk in Vancouver! I have never been to the US. All my activity was here in Vancouver, and only seeds, which don’t even have any THC or drug quality in them.

Q – Forty years?

Yes, because the three charges come down with each 10-year mandatory minimums. You have to understand that what they are saying is that I am the biggest marijuana dealer in the history of the US criminal justice system. They say that for every seed I sell they are equating it to a plant. So they are saying that I’m responsible for several million plants at a value of $3 billion. They are saying that I helped produced 1.1 million plants worth $3 billion. Which is a record well beyond anyone else.

But from my perspective, it is also the whole point of the revolution. It is a peaceful, botanical revolution; “overgrow the government” was our slogan. What a great way to have to have revolution. Nobody gets hurt; everyone grows a lot of plants. Nobody dies. The DEA and I agree on the facts. I’m hoping that everything they say is true. So I’m in a real bind. I look at it as a great leap forward. Everyone is growing these plants, and they don’t have to go the inner city to buy cannabis. They don’t have to deal with crime elements; they can just grow in their backyard. Real professionals don’t use seeds to grow marijuana. So organized crime would never buy from me, there’d be no point. Organized crime would use cuttings to provide their starter plants, it is instant whereas using seeds is a 6-month time period for commercial applications, far too cumbersome for gangs and mobs like Hells Angels and the cartels. So it was a good thing for people at home to grow.

 

Q – I know from the emails I got about your case over a number of years, that two big themes emerged. One is that people saw it as a sovereignty issue. How dare the U.S. reach its enforcement arm into Canada, charge a Canadian citizen for something that you would never have been charged with in Canada? I think the sovereignty issue has struck people and crosses political boundaries. The second issue is this principle of whether or not there is harm. People think of the justice system as responding to issues that involve responding to harm: if you hurt someone, beat someone up, murder someone, we have laws to deal with that. Where we are talking about consensual activities, when we are talking about harm not being done, then why is the weight of this massive system coming down on you?

Noam Chomsky, when he was asked about the drug war, he said the drug war has failed at all of its stated goals. That drug use is more common than ever before, prices are lower, purity is higher, organized crime is worse. Everything they claimed they want to stop in the drug war is much worse now. So clearly those are not the real goals of the drug war, those are only the stated ambitions of the drug war. The real goals are to marginalize minorities, keep the people in fear, having the security police prison state providing a lot wherewithal for government power, advancing and encroaching on government power and advancing the power of the police.

Now in those areas, in those unstated goals, they are moving forward. The police get more powerful, they get more privileges and rights, they get to violate our constitutional freedoms, minorities are more marginalized, blacks, natives in particular end up in jail. So the understated goals which government can’t say aloud are to say that ‘our job is to keep everyone under the thumb of the federal government, so we do this and this’. The RCMP had the French Canadians in the 70s, the trade unionists in the 30s, the RCMP needs a good group of people to keep under their thumb… They need to justify a massive federal police force, so they demonize, they are constantly asking for harsher laws, more money, more surveillance, associating everybody with organized crime, which is still a small amount of activity in the marijuana trade. It is all a form of state terrorism.

You brought up it up: sovereignty. We are integrating our sovereignty with the United States and this is a technique that they have pioneered, the kind of SWAT police system. It is not Canadian but we are getting more and more of it as we integrate. And then the harm principle. That is a 60s cultural phenomenon that the Harper government is very much against. When he started the National Drug Strategy in 2007, Harper referred to lyrics of songs on Beatles records. Harper was then a few years later singing the Beatles marijuana-inspired song from Sgt. Pepper, ‘I Get High With A Little Help From My Friends’ at the National Arts Center. So how schizoid is that? On one hand he is saying we need to have a war on this so-called permissive drug culture of the 1960’s, and then on the other hand he is singing a most famous marijuana celebration song and bathing himself, like a geeky wanna-be lounge act, in the glory of the pothead Beatles. And then on the other hand here he is singing it and reveling in it.

Q – We have had a really good struggle, battle here in Canada. We have made progress. For a long time a lot of the Americans that we worked with on this issue, they saw Canada as being more progressive, more liberal, moving ahead. And now we seemed to have moved back. It seems the tables have turned.

Greatly so. You have six state Assembly people in Washington State wanting to legalize marijuana with a bill. You have over a 100 in the state assembly in California supporting Bill 390 and wanting to legalize it there. You’ve got ballot initiatives in Nevada in 2012, California at the end of 2010. You’ve got a cannabis café opened up in Portland, Oregon. You’ve got a 150 cannabis dispensaries opening up in Colorado in the last few months. See that is President Obama’s greatest achievement so far.

For all the criticisms he’s got this very important thing is going on. When George Bush was President, and municipality or state would propose modernizing their cannabis statutes, he would oppose it. He would send someone to stop it. The US federal government threatened those local or state governments with punishments and the loss of federal funding. That had a tremendous impact on the state’s ability to move forward with their own legislation for medical marijuana. Well, President Obama issued an order to Eric Holder, the Attorney General, saying the states are not to be interfered with. Any initiatives that the states pass — in any regards — not just medical marijuana, though that is the one that is most prominent, he gives them a promise that they are not to interfere with that. Well as a result of that there has been an explosion now. Michigan’s got dispensaries, Colorado has over a hundred emerge in the first month of 2010, Los Angeles they say alone has over 1,000.

Q – Whereas in Canada we are now going the other way.

We have over 4,000 people [nationally] with medical marijuana exemptions. California has half a million. In Canada we have 4,000 after 10 years. That is because the Harper government has been thwarting the intent of the courts, which was to make it a normal medial regime where anybody, like for getting a doctor’s prescription for any medical painkiller. Clearly with only 4,000 Canadians it hasn’t really happened.

Q – If we could turn to the more personal side for a moment. You’ve been in jail before.

Yes, arrested 25 times, jailed 19 times. All for peaceful cannabis civil disobedience and cannabis activism. It doesn’t include my arrests and jailings for my previous campaigns of civil disobedience in the 1980’s.

Q – This will be the longest.

Oh, without question, yes.

 
Q – How do you prepare yourself for this?

The first thing I am always aware of is that I was very loved by my parents. They have both passed on now, but I grew up with a lot of love and my dad and mom really liked me, and were fans of mine and were always so encouraging that every day I feel luckier than many people, even though I am in jail. Because I’m in jail in my 50s.

It would be a terrible time to be in jail in your 20s, because those are such formative years. But by now my philosophy is set, I have a wide circle of people who love me, who care for me. So I didn’t ever suffer what others suffer from while in jail, because everyone confesses to me. I know right off from the get go that most of them never had a chance in life. Most people I meet in jail, you know they were going to end up there. No father in their life, violence, chaos, disorder, homelessness at early age, bad decision about friends and drugs at an early age. You just don’t meet white-collar people. People who never had a chance end up there. For one thing it is humbling.

I had loving parents. I have a loving wife. I am surrounded by friends. So my life is still really stable, even though I’m sitting in jail. I can read. I can write. I’m not in any pain. Those are things that you are always grateful for. One time I was in pain when I was in jail and I was really miserable. But when you are not in pain in jail, and you can read and write. I tell myself that every day is still a good day. It could be much worse. Or you could be like so many of your fellow inmates, who are so much worse off.

[Jodie] We do kind of just live in the day. We don’t really think about it. But at times you do get sentimental. But it isn’t running our lives.

[Marc] Here is the thing, she really fell in love with me in my first time in jail. I would write furiously in the evening at Saskatoon correctional, from 10 in the evening to 2 in the morning. And then the next day after my job, my seven-hour a day job cleaning the administration center where the prison director and staff worked, a 45 a day job, which the director told me was the top paying inmate job in the place. And after I got in front working at 3 pm, I’d read my diary entries over the phone, calling collect to POT-TV and they would record my daily talks and put them on the internet as an audio blog, and then give Jodie the audio record for her to painstakingly transcribe that evening, taking her 3 to 5 hours each night. I had a lot to say.

[Jodie] One day our webmaster came up to us and said there is something new people are doing called blogs. He said you should do a jail blog… We needed someone to start typing and transcribing everything he said. So every night I would take the audio home and listen to everything he had to say, and transcribe.

[Marc] She got to know me really well, because she’d hear my thoughts on a daily basis for over 50 days. She would transcribe my recorded vocal diary each and every day into text for online readers, which included most of the staff at Saskatoon Correctional. I would read Malcolm X; I would read Martin Luther King. I went to a sweat lodge three times and that was a really great thing because it was the most demanding thing physically that I had ever done. At first I was really scared. But after I got through it three times I wasn’t scared at all. And that was the lesson about prison. Before I went in I was really scared. But after I came out I was thinking to myself ‘hey, I did that.’

[Jodie] And even now, after his 52 days at North Fraser, as soon as he got out we hardly remember what it was like.

Q – So you very much live in the day. What about for you Jodie. What will it be like for you?

[Jodie] I will be very busy. When he was gone I was so busy I didn’t have time to stop and be sad.

[Marc] Jodie owns the company now. I’ve been training her for years to take over. She has 20 employees. She is involved in politics. She is writing letters all the time. She has to look after the Free Marc campaign. The great thing is that I’ve always wanted her to do this without me in her shadow. Sooner or later when you have political aspirations you have to establish yourself as your own person. So I keep telling her this is good for you and me too. I’ll be able to write my notes and memoirs and things I don’t normally have time to do. The great thing about prison is that you have lots of times for quality thinking… For me I reflect a lot and write extensively. You can’t have quality thoughts in this world. You and I are affected by people wanting our attention all the time. You can’t just think for four hours about ideas, and put them order and start writing. Who has four hours like that? In jail you can have that if you organize your time. You can have these thoughts and start telling a story. That is why a lot of great things are written in jail, because there is a quality thinking time.

Q – My last question. You have many supporters and followers. I think the momentum for changing our drug laws is gaining strength. It is broadening across society. What do you think the impact is, of what is happening to you, in relation to changes in drug laws in Canada?

It has had the effect of bringing people who don’t consume marijuana, or who may not be very interested in drug laws, become concerned because of the implications for sovereignty. For example, France does not extradite anyone, to anywhere, for any reason. French citizenship has value because they won’t extradite you. What is the value then of Canadian citizenship?

Libby Davies is the MP for Vancouver East and the New Democratic Party spokesperson for drug policy.
 

Read the original article online at www.Rabble.ca
 

Today I got photos from Marc in prison! They were taken during our visit on July 4th, when inmates can buy photographs of themselves with family. We had to choose one of four painted walls as the backdrop, so we picked the Seattle skyline at night.

I was so pleased to get these photos in the mail, and share them on Facebook so people can see how Marc looks and what his inmate clothes are like. This is the first glimpse of Marc in US federal prison for everyone but me and his lawyers. He has lost weight, but he eats everything he can.

I was also pleased to see an LTE (letter to the editor) by me printed today in the Calgary Sun! It was the first submission I’ve sent in a long time, and it was published, as my letters often are, so I’m reminded to keep writing! It was in response to a great column – one of many recent ones in Canada – about how the Canadian government’s prison plans doesn’t match the crime statistics.

Here is my letter:

Re: Call for prisons, Aug. 9: Dave Breakenridge writes "for someone to go to jail, people need to report the crime, a suspect has to be arrested, tried and convicted." Not quite, at least not with the modified definition of "serious crime" announced by the Conservative government.

Under the changes, any amount of cannabis grown or sold is now a "serious crime", which allows the police to use their "organized crime" tool box, without court permission, and asset forfeiture without needing a conviction. Cops won’t need more people reporting crimes. They will simply spy on anyone they believe to be growing or selling any amount of pot, arrest them, seize their property, then deny them bail — all without due process normally applied to regular citizens.

So don’t be mystified about who will fill those new prison cells; it’ll be your friends and family who use even a little bit of cannabis on weekends, because they are now guilty of a "serious crime."

JODIE EMERY
VANCOUVER

(Drug policy is a mess. – Calgary Sun editorial comment)

So that was good to see! Marc was also very pleased with it. I used to read the newspapers (Vancouver Sun, The Province, National Post, and Globe & Mail) every morning while Marc slept in, and I would often write a letter to at least one paper every other day. It’s been a while, so it’s nice to know that my first LTE in a few months was printed!

Additionally, on August 9th the Vancouver Sun had an article on "smart meter" technology and how it will help police detect grow-ops. I was contacted by the journalist to give my perspective on it, and I send my response – and I was quoted word-for-word:

Advocates of legalizing marijuana, meanwhile, think the grow operations most likely to be detected by the new meter technology are family enterprises.

"Prohibition breeds creativity for getting around obstacles and law enforcement, so there will be ways for large-scale growers to go undetected," Jodie Emery said in an e-mail.

Emery’s husband is Marc Emery, an outspoken advocate of pot legalization now serving five years in a U.S. penitentiary for a mail order business that shipped marijuana seeds from Canada to the United States.

"They can just get generators, or buy entire gas stations (as we’ve seen done in the past), or use new LED lighting technology, or grow smaller crops in more locations, which actually spreads the problem out and makes it harder to detect," Jodie Emery said.

"The most dangerous aspect of the smart meter program is that it means small-scale, mom-and-pop indoor gardens will be more likely to be shut down, whereas organized crime can afford the techniques and technology to avoid detection (in the ways I outlined above). So it puts more of the cannabis market into the hands of gangs, and out of small-scale personal gardeners.

"No matter what BC Hydro does with smart meters, grow ops will never go away unless cannabis prohibition ends."

My comments there were the final words in the article, so I feel good about getting the truth out! My fight is not only to bring my husband home, but also to end prohibition so every drug war prisoner can go home to their loved ones.

Today I was told I would get less time on the computer to send and read emails because there was griping by some of the inmates about my use. Admittedly, it is about 3 hours a day, but I line up like everyone else and there are others that use it even more frequently and for longer times than I. It seems I have aroused some to complain. So my use will be in the early morning, in the afternoon around 4:30 pm, and at night, for less time in total.

I will have a hard time finding the time to type & email out the chapters of the proposed book I’m writing, so I may have to just send you my notes in long hand, which is how I do my first draft anyway. I’ll just edit it and rewrite the second draft more neatly and forward it along to you by mail rather than using up valuable computer time. The chapters are much longer than my editor specified, but there’s so much to tell that I thought I’d put it down and leave it for you and him to edit. It’s better to have too much information as opposed to too little.

The first chapter deals with my first album purchase when I was 14 (up to then I bought 45 rpm single songs), which was Cheech & Chong’s BIG BAMBU album. I memorized that album, finding their voices mocking, exaggerated and subversive. I really thought marijuana smoking was a comedic form of social rebellion. I was a teenager who found my obsession with Marvel Comic books as gratifying a mind changer as I could imagine, along with my comic book business called "Marc’s Comic Room" (named so because I sold the comics originally from my bedroom in my parents house from 1971 to 1975, when I was aged 12 to 16) and my budding love of science-fiction, I had no concept of the need for "drugs" or marijuana.

Then I jump to 1979 whereupon I discover Ayn Rand and the tremendous life-changing effect on my life, and how that happened. Then to December 21, 1980 when I meet Sandra, and I discover the joy of a cannabis high while falling in love with her that night. Then we jump to 1991 when I sponsor a spoken word performer (and former front man for the punk band Dead Kennedys) to perform his new CD "I Blow Minds For A living" at Centennial Hall in London, Ontario.

I had found out about Jello Biafra while doing my radio show on CHRW called "Radio Free Speech: Revolution Through Rock & Rap", and got together $5,000 to pay him his fee (of $3,000) and to rent the Hall for a night ($2,000 with sound equipment). We sold 420 tickets at $10 each, so I only lost about $1,000. In that performance of his then-current CD, there was a 15-minute segment called "Grow More Pot" about this book, by a guy named Jack Herer, called the Emperor Wears No Clothes. Biafra spoke about this conspiracy to suppress the history of the hemp plant and its incredible history in the world, and particularly Canada and the USA; that George Washington was America’s biggest cannabis farmer ever; that the Declaration of Independence was written on cannabis hemp paper, and it was mandatory to be grown in the early colonies, and in World War 2, the US Department of Agriculture urged farmers to GROW HEMP FOR VICTORY.

After his performance, I found out the book was banned in Canada, and all magazines and books about marijuana and drugs were, in fact, banned and had been banned for 4 years, since 1987. So I vowed to break the ban by selling these books and magazines over the next 10 months. I don’t get charged (unlike when I opened my store illegally on Sundays), even though I took out ads announcing my plans and sold copies in front of the police station, but I do end up bringing Jack Herer, Steve Hager, Ed Rosenthal & Paul Mavrides to London to autograph and speak about their work.

I got frustrated with everything after so many campaigns and so little change, so in July 1992 I moved to Asia with my partner Deb, and her two kids Jordon & Jeremy. While in Asia I saw in a government-banned newspaper an article about the Conservative leadership convention between Jean Charest & Kim Campbell. It came up that they both had smoked pot. This is the only article about Canada I saw in Asia in two years, and it’s all about how pot is very common in this place called the "lower mainland of British Columbia". Piquing my interest, I joked, "If we ever go broke here, we’ll have to go to BC and set up some kind of hemp revolution business." I laughed at the thought of going broke, as if it would never happen, but the idea keeps evolving in my head anyway.

8 months later, I really was nearly broke after foolishly spending $30,000 building a dream chalet on the side of this magnificent lake, Lake Maninjau, in West Sumatra, Indonesia. I got completely defrauded of my money, the house was built – a spectacular place, but I never spent a day inside it after completion, as the property owners rented it out to wealthy tourists and I was bollocksed. Crying in despair one day when my money situation got critical, I announced, pulling my head up out of my tear-strewn hands, that we are going to Vancouver to begin this hemp revolution business.

Once I arrived, I quickly got to work in this unfamiliar new city of Vancouver that I did not know. I sold “High Times” magazines and the book “Grow yer own Stone” door-to-door on the street to raise money, beginning April 11, 1994, and by July 7, 1994, I opened "HEMP BC: the Marijuana & Hemp Center for Greater Vancouver", as my first storefront sign read.

That’s the summary of the first chapter. So I’ll finish the first draft tonight, and then try to re-write it as neatly as possible by hand and mail it to you. Hopefully these issues of time use on the computer can be dealt with. If I do need more time, there are very few people wanting to use it at 8 am in the morning, when most inmates (including me) are still sleeping, but I may have to rearrange my schedule and perhaps type up my chapters in that period when there is little pressure to use the email.

I am in good health, my sweetheart, and I am working on my letters, books, and currently reading “god Is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens, back to back with Robert Crumb’s illustrated Book of Genesis, from the Bible. The Bible is total fairy tale nonsense, albeit nicely illustrated by Crumb, but that any sentient human can find value in such a story is beyond belief – or rather it IS belief. Religion is strange stuff indeed.

I am gratified by all your great work on my behalf, and thank you for all the time you spend on my FREE MARC campaign. Without you, I would surely be so demoralized, as this is a hard place to be. I look forward to calling you tonight and especially your visit this Saturday, the highlight of my difficult existence here.

I love you immensely and long for the time when I am back at your side, as I ought to be and deserve to be. Hopefully people are writing the Minister of Public Safety and urging friends and relatives of theirs to do so also. I need thousands of letters on my behalf to flood the Minister: “Please repatriate Marc Emery at your earliest opportunity.”

I am very gratified that the opinion writers and editorialists of every stripe are condemning the escalating Conservative attempts to fill the prisons and expand the prisons. We need an election immediately and I hope you are doing your best to urge one in your writings and comments. It is essential we change governments. The country is being dragged, by the Tories, into a dark place of punishment and intolerance and irrationality because theocratic fundamentalist Christians have the government in its grip. People should read “The Armageddon Factor”, “Harper’s Team” and “Sheeple” to find out how bad it’s gotten.

I Love You so much, and goodbye for now,
Your devoted and grateful husband,
Marc