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My wife Jodie Emery and I both receive thousands of letters and inquiries with impassioned pleas that read: "I want to do something to make a difference. I want to legalize marijuana. What can I do? Can you advise or help me start? Where do I begin?" This is a question, without rival, that we hear most often.

It comes mostly from Americans and Canadians, but I have received the same question from India, Australia, Europe, the Philippines, Japan, and all over the world. It is a universal desire shared by many people in the cannabis culture the planet over.

If all these millions of people, largely high school and college students, could be harnessed into productive purpose, it would be a huge political force indeed! But most people who consume cannabis and believe in its worth still do nothing to advance our cause in any meaningful way.

The sobering truth is that true political action that gains results is boring, largely frustrating, uninteresting, tiresome, hard work and requires great patience for a reward that may not ever materialize. It involves writing legible and intelligent short letters (spell check always on, and thoroughly edited). It requires gathering verifiable, validated signatures, with care that the signatory includes their full address and live in the jurisdiction required. It involves going to an elected official's office with a specific request, to get that 10 minute appointment may involve 3 or 4 letters, emails and phone calls. That requires perseverance. A rally will require you to have a specific political purpose, and will require intense advance promotion, and it will require the gathering of contact information from everyone who attends.

Useful political activism rarely ever feels like fun. It feels like work. Exhausting work. Most young people don't really know that much about hard, focused work. Most young people don't even vote – most of the cannabis culture doesn't vote! Most of the cannabis culture likes to party, but hard work for a political objective, they do not often do.

There are a dedicated few people out there that do know this experience of hard work for a political purpose. The great leaders in our movement know all about hard work. Vivian McPeak of Seattle, who for 20 years has put on Seattle's Hempfest, the massive annual gathering of 200,000+ people in Myrtle Edwards Park as a non-paid volunteer, knows about hard work. He was a leading activist to get the 2003 Seattle ballot initiative I-75 making marijuana possession the lowest possible police priority in Seattle.

(Photo: Vivian McPeak and Jodie, Seattle Hempfest 2011)

Every year on Christmas Day, Vivian McPeak and a few other dedicated true activists spend the holiday with signs in front of a courthouse, federal building or jail protesting the incarceration of his fellow citizens under the US drug laws. He writes letters, meets with Congress people and state representatives, assists other festivals and rallies, guides and commits to numerous other political actions. He and others attended and helped organize rallies outside the Seattle courthouse where I was sentenced to 5 years in a US federal prison for my activist activities I did in Canada. And yet very few people might recognize him on the street. Many times his activity may appear to gain no political result. There may be no reward other than knowing he is doing the right thing.

HARD WORK & COMMITMENT IS REQUIRED

As an activist, it is hard to measure our impact on the movement and the political system by our contribution. Sometimes, often even, it seems like you might be toiling in obscurity, having no visible or discernable impact. You may never know though the great impact you can have, will have, and do have, by your example of dedication, hard work and focused energy on a political goal. Only weeks, months or years later will you meet someone, or receive an email from an activist doing some good work, or inspired to get involved, who says, "I saw you speak at the library rally two years ago and I went home and read more, and found you were right, and decided to get involved. So now I'm at this booth gathering signatures for the 2012 ballot initiative."

Or you’ll hear, "I saw you gathering signatures on a cold April day at a table outside the mall, you were getting medical marijuana on the ballot, and I wondered what would motivate someone to freeze in the cold, and you patiently explained why it was so important. That always stuck in my head, how dedicated you were. When I met a person later who said you were all a bunch of stoners who just wanted to get high, I remembered you and spoke up, 'That's not true,' and I found out I was a believer, and I don't even smoke pot, but I became an advocate that day." Or, "I read your letter in the daily paper. You know, it couldn't have been more than a hundred words you wrote, but what powerfully true words. I couldn't get the logic of what you said out of my head. That was the day I was convinced. That's why I'm here today, at this lecture (rally, signature gathering), with three friends I brought."

That is the ripple effect of our endeavors.

When you contemplate how to make a difference, there are some things that will not work and will not happen. You will not find anyone famous or a celebrity to contribute their time to your project, be it a fundraiser, rally, or whatever. Celebrities expect to be paid no matter what it’s for. And celebrities never do anything controversial that could endanger their reputation with their movie studios, record labels, their ability to travel internationally, or the IRS and other government agencies that keep an eye on us all. That's why celebrities lend their name to issues that few can find fault with, like starving children, world hunger/poverty, cancer, etc.

Few celebrities can be found to lend their name to campaigns against censorship, legalizing drugs, ending the prison-punishment complex, amnesty for illegal immigrants, etc. because there is blowback to putting your name and reputation on the line for anything controversial. Even celebrities like Chad Kroeger of Nickelback, who espoused the joys of marijuana at every Nickelback concert I ever went to, never advocates legalization in any public statement, nor does he lend his name to any political activity to that end. In fact, he chums around with Prime Minister Harper who would love to see all marijuana users in prison and stigmatized! Celebrities by and large use not only cannabis, but also a wide variety of illegal drugs, and virtually never get politically active. The more powerful a person is in society, the less likely they will do anything with their power to contribute to the political discourse that seeks to legalize marijuana and end the prohibition.

(Photo: Richard Lee, activist businessman who financed Prop. 19)

Marijuana growers and marijuana dealers, people with money who profit by prohibition, will only help you if it helps them. As we saw with Proposition 19 in California in 2010, where the counties with a large number of prohibition profiteers voted NO in larger numbers than those counties where marijuana was not so embedded in the culture, they are largely self-interested people concerned far more with their own ability to exploit our culture while it’s illegal than to use those funds to liberate us from the prohibition tyranny.

That is why a saint of a man like Richard Lee, who took over a million dollars of his prohibition profits (from dispensary sales to thousands of happy patients, and education seminars for activists, growers, and medical users), virtually financed the entire Proposition 19 campaign himself, because a large number of the growers in California are prohibition parasites and do not want to see cannabis legalized for all. A visionary and beautiful man like Richard Lee was a rare, rare person. He made a tremendous difference, yet was betrayed by the exploiters of our culture and their weak-minded acolytes who sabotaged our greatest hope for legalization in 2010.

The initiatives being circulated for 2012 in California will not be successful because there is no saint like Richard Lee giving a million plus dollars to gather those signatures. Those initiative attempts will fail miserably because money that could help the movement to end punishment for pot has instead corrupted part of the medical marijuana movement in California. The many vested interests want to keep it illegal, so it can be profitable for them: police, prosecutors, politicians, gangsters, and many marijuana growers.

So you are left with ordinary citizens like you to make a difference. So what can you do? Plenty!

WHY YOU’RE GETTING INVOLVED

What's at stake with continued prohibition? Here are themes that required activism to address and remedy:

1) The drug war brings civil war, violence, murder, genocide, defoliation, and narco-military and government corruption to nation states all over the planet, of which Mexico, Columbia, and Afghanistan are but current examples.

2) In the United States there are somewhat over one million Americans in county, state and federal prisons for drug offenses out of a prison population of 2,500,000. There are 50,000-100,000 foreign nationals in US jails for drug offenses. There are 50,000-100,000 people in prisons for being a felon in possession of a weapon, or a weapon in the proximity of a drug trade, offences that are related to the drug war. Drug offenses then account for about half of all prisoners in the US. This affects approximately 10,000,000 other Americans whose family members, heads of household, breadwinners, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers are in prison from drug offenses. Many of these families then become life-long dependants of the welfare-prison-punishment system.

3) Over 10,000 teenagers enter the drug trade every month. It starts out simply enough. Teenagers needing marijuana choose a close friend who "knows someone". That friend then quickly finds out that if he buys a quality ounce for $320, and has three friends who will front him $110 each for a quarter ounce, then he can have his own quarter ounce covered by his friends' contribution. This is how virtually every dealer in the illegal substance trades begins. But that novice dealer quickly learns about economy of scale, and word gets out to others and soon he is buying "QPs" (quarter-pounds) and having a wider network of "friends" who want the good stuff. Quickly he begins to make money, and his client base expands. Soon he has a lot of money, better clothes, girls who are impressed, a car, status, and other "bling". His lifestyle looks very enviable to other teenagers whose legal alternatives are part-time work at McDonalds or clerking at Target at $8 an hour. And so the materialist corruption of youth inevitably spreads rapidly as numerous teenagers in a social circle seek the material rewards of the being a dealer in the drug trade. The dealer then meets suppliers of other substances, and the corruption expands. The potential for abuse of more hazardous substances then becomes more likely. When one dealer is jailed or removed through gang violence, others, not just teenagers, take escalating measures to capture that aspect of the drug market now made available by the elimination of the previous supplier. Prohibition is terribly destructive to our young people, poor people, minorities, those whose English skills are poor, those who lack a good education, those who did not have two parents regularly at home, and those with children who cannot get a decent paying job. As I said in my 'drug abuse awareness classes' here at Yazoo prison, "Would any of us, guards or inmates, be here if these drugs were sold legally in stores under regular market controls and conditions? Why would anyone be dealing drugs? We wouldn't. Prohibition made it attractive, and inevitable, considering the circumstances of poverty, unemployment and life at home."

4) The militarization and the establishment of the permanent police state and the use of violence by police forces in the United States, Canada, Mexico and the world over has occurred because of the war on drugs. The erosion and often elimination of constitutional safeguards to the privacy, safety and liberty of the citizen has occurred because of the drug war. Police powers of arrest, detention, surveillance, violence, force, forfeiture, have become dangerous to ordinary citizens as a result of prohibition.

5) Parents who use marijuana, even safely, even for medical reasons lose their children to 'child protective services' every day in Canada and the United States. Have you ever heard someone say, "I was taken from my parents by child protective services because my parents smoked marijuana, and I was separated from my Mom, Dad, and siblings and placed in foster care, and that made my life better"? You never hear it. Families are torn apart by the war on drugs.

6) Prohibition keeps the price of marijuana absurdly high. In a legal environment, marijuana would be $10-$20 an ounce, leaving the average marijuana consumer thousands of additional dollars each year to spend on education, their children, consumer goods, savings, rent, a home, their health. Ending prohibition would channel billions back into the productive economy and increase the standard of living of hundreds of millions of cannabis consumers on the planet.

7) While marijuana remains illegal and expensive, alcohol and prescription drugs get used more often by default because of their price and availability advantages. There is no more destructive substance on earth than alcohol. If marijuana were legal, it could be advertised and promoted, and the market comparisons of the effect of the two would be compelling advertising. Alcohol kills over a million people on the planet each year, marijuana kills absolutely zero. Alcohol causes staggering violence, barbarism, spousal abuse, aggression, traffic fatalities, gun abuse, fighting, riots, and destruction of property. Marijuana achieves a far more desirable state of intoxication without any of the negative aspects of alcohol intoxication. Alcohol destroys organs and brain cells in the body and advances cancer, while marijuana repairs brain cells and attacks cancers and tumors in the body. But until marijuana is legal, commercialized, and marketed without the current demonization by government, these comparisons are hard to get into the minds of citizens and consumers. Marijuana, once marketed, will steal billions of dollars in sales from former alcohol and prescription drug users. Alcohol consumption and abuse will decline precipitously once marijuana is legalized.

8) The expense to taxpayer of marijuana prohibition in the United States since 1970 is estimated to exceed one trillion dollars. In 2011 it was about $40 billion. And that's just the United States. And just marijuana prohibition.

9) Ending prohibition brings the role of government more in line with its proper purpose: to provide infrastructure and to protect our fundamental liberties. The purpose of government should never be to restrict or interfere in our peaceful lifestyle choices, or the market that seeks to serve our peaceful lifestyle choices.

All these aspects of the catastrophic effects of prohibition are inter-related too. Eliminating the cannabis prohibition and drug prohibition is the single greatest good that we could achieve in our lifetime. It would uplift all the people of the world, dramatically reduce violence and militarism, restore our fundamental civil rights and liberties, and improve the world's health. The improvements in our way of life are so great as to hardly be imaginable.

But I want you to closely examine your life and brainstorm about how much better life would be for 7 billion people on earth if we can eliminate prohibition.

GETTING TO WORK

An effective activist is an organized individual. You need to have a goal, and to that end you need a TO-DO LIST every day. This outlines what you need to achieve that morning, that day, and that week. You need to have a poster of chart or calendar clearly visible to you to remind yourself what you must get done to further your activist goals.

The other side of this coin is that you must eliminate or push aside time-wasting distractions, or at least indulge in these time-wasting vices only after you have accomplished the goals set out in your TO-DO list. Time wasting activities include getting high without working on activism, spending hours on Facebook, instant messaging, chatting with friends, gratuitous snacking, pornography, and any activity that takes your attention away from the work at hand. Work is work. It won't be fun like getting high or masturbating or tweeting pointless trivia about what sandwich you had for lunch. Work gets results, and that's what an activist does or attempts to do.

Most of you will have to conduct your activism around fundamental survival and primary obligations such as your schooling, your job, your children, buying and consuming food, keeping your home clean and tidy, etc. so a ruthlessly maintained TO-DO list is essential if you are to get anything of use to our cause done.

Most of the work you do as an activist has to do with POLITICS and the political system. Even though there are over 30 million regular marijuana consumers in Canada and the USA, most of these 30 million do no activism of any kind. They cannot, in the majority, even be bothered to vote. They are ignorant of the political system and how to effectively participate in it. They willfully stay ignorant even though they are persecuted and risk a criminal record, fines, jail, losing their job, their children, property, and drivers license. The prohibition laws established by three levels of government (Local, state/provincial & federal) pose a 24-hour threat to each person in the cannabis culture, as well as forcing us to buy on the black market and pay prohibition prices for marijuana costing thousands of dollars a year.

Politics is a tough thing to participate in, especially if one regards himself or herself as an idealist and sees how disappointingly corrupt politics is. But the alternative (that is, not participating in politics) is far more dangerous to each one of us. Of course it’s not a perfect system – it’s not even a good one – but it’s the system that dictates many aspects of our lives, and we’ve got to get involved in it if we have any hope of changing it for the better.

FIRST STEPS

Your objective is to change the laws, which exist with a political system. An important and secondary goal is to educate, motivate, inspire and recruit others into political activity to change or abolish the prohibition laws or aspects of prohibition.

There are basic first steps you must take. (Note: much of the following is written for Americans, but the same tactics and examples apply for Canada too.) The first step is to join the existing groups that have been established who have a track record of success or are useful in the information they distribute. I recommend you forward $25 by credit card or PayPal or money order to each:

www.stopthedrugwar.net
www.norml.org
www.mpp.org

These three organizations I highly recommend for their information value alone. $25 a year is the least you should give each one because the education and information they provide is valuable way beyond the $25. They will give you ideas of activity you can do locally. You will also have the opportunity of receiving alerts that instruct you to call your Congressman, legislator (that is your state representative) about specific bills before Congress, some good ones, like Ron Paul-Barney Frank's legalization bill in Congress, or bad ones, as most of them tend to be.

Marijuana Policy Project has been very effective in the past getting statewide ballot initiatives organized. They have a pull down menu on their website by state so you can see what important bills/activities that may affect your state are in progress. Norml.org is the best information source in the movement, and StopTheDrugWar.net is one of the best also. I urge you to support them by sending $25 to them right now.

If you say, "I don't have any money", then I can only say, "the only way to get money is to go out and work and earn the money. " You cannot be an effective activist if you are broke. Period. All activism requires effort, focus, a goal, and some of your own money that is necessary to be expended. I'm not asking you to spend a lot of money at all, but every one of us in the cannabis culture has a moral obligation to sacrifice some pleasure, luxury, time or whatever to provide some money to fight this grotesque injustice. GET TO WORK! Shovel snow, mow a lawn, work as a grocery clerk, get a job, earn an income. This is a war, for goodness sakes. Put off that gratuitous tattoo, go without that primo weed for a week or two, give up your weekend drinking budget – make sacrifices to make it happen. Activism should become a priority above all other non-essential survival and family obligations.

Most activities that people in the cannabis culture enjoy doing achieve no political purpose. For example, an April 20th rally has virtually no political value; it will not change any laws or politicians’ minds. Very few contacts are gained that are politically valid at an April 20th rally. It is a celebration of the culture, and a protest of sorts. But you should be trying to make a real difference in laws and policy.

Do not form your own group as your first step. You are not yet qualified to organize or lead others or risk squandering the energy, time and resources of others. This is about what YOU can do.

Don't form groups or committees unless there is a specific time-actualized goal that the committee is organizing manpower, financing and energy to achieve. Committees are slow, procedural, and accomplish very little. Someone needs to do the work. Someone needs to set a goal. Someone needs to make it happen or make sure it happens. That can be you. You don't need a committee. You need to be a good communicator to those who agree to work with you, and you need a specific goal and perhaps others who share that goal. But just get to work! If you are doing it right, others will volunteer to join you in what you are doing. Your dedication, if it inspires and seems to be working, will gather others to want to work with you or help you. Do not get bogged down with the meaningless cliche that "we all have to work together." It's not true. What "we" really need are individual people willing to do actual "work" to get political change. It can be done in a myriad of different ways, but what the movement lacks today are self-motivated foot soldiers who will do what's necessary with the talent, time, money and drive they now possess.

(Photo: Jodie at a protest against prohibitionist Prime Minister Harper)

The movement absolutely does not need any more Facebook pages, websites, or social network sites with a non-specific purpose. A Facebook page called "Legalize marijuana" or any such similar sentiment often wastes the time and energy of anyone who bothers getting involved with it. Worse, it gives you a false sense of satisfaction you are doing something for the movement, and you are not. You may be doing something "fun" or "self-satisfying", but that is not useful political activism. A “like” is not activism.

Much of social media is anti-activism because it distracts people away from doing something really useful for the movement. Social media is a catalyst to activism, but it’s not activism. Tahir Square in Cairo, Egypt was filled by people who were using social media to get bodies to the square – but the people showing up in the square was the activism. People willing to get their head kicked in, roughed up, jailed, shot and killed, taking a risk with their lives – that was the activism. Social media, Twitter, and text messaging got them to the square, but didn't make a dictator fall. PEOPLE POWER did that. People willing to give something up. People willing to die.

What are YOU willing to give up to achieve liberty for yourself and our cause?

CONTACTING YOUR REPRESENTATIVE

The first thing all activists must do is begin a dialogue with your elected representatives. This means writing a cogent, BRIEF letter, by mail (not email) to your Congressperson in Washington. Your connection to MPP, NORML, and StopTheDrugWar, all with offices in Washington, DC, will keep you informed of bills and activities that deserve your notice and your input.

Letters by postal mail are far more influential than email. Firstly, mostly older people who actually get out to vote write letters by mail, and politicians consider older people as more valuable. Secondly, letters exist physically. Physical things are harder to deny. An email may or may not be seen and read, may or may not be answered or considered.

A physical letter has a psychological advantage. The Congressperson and his secretaries and mail readers know that anyone who would, in this day and age, type up a thoughtful letter, put a stamp on it, walk to a post office box, and patiently wait for a response after making a physical effort, is probably going to put a similar effort into voting. A person who does all that may get politically active if disappointed, or may volunteer for the Congressperson's re-election campaign if satisfied. A Congressperson gets hundreds, perhaps thousands of emails, but they take little effort to send, and letters are much more rare and far more precious politically.

You will get a physical reply by postal mail, unlike an email. This is a record of your dialogue with your elected representative. Know in advance you are likely to be unsatisfied by your exchange. Your Congressperson will likely admit to a bias that you find ridiculous and irrational. But this gives you an opportunity to understand where the Congressperson is coming from. You look at his presentation of his point of view, you analyze it, and then you identify an area where you can send a BRIEF medical or scientific rebuttal to his main point – preferably a rebuttal that comes from a source that Congressperson would respect (that is, someone from his religious order, or political party, or colleague from the university he attended).

Name-calling and insults are absolutely forbidden in any exercise of effective activism. You shouldn't even use negative terminology in your letters to elected officials. You should thank them for their response of your previous letter. You should express interest in their next town hall meeting in the state or district. You should emphasize your family has lived in that district for many generations, if that is true. You should find the Congressperson's last election material, and seize on values he has expressed that you can point to and explain how ending prohibition, would, in fact, lead to the kind of America and the values the Congressperson claims to aspire to.

You must select your topics of discussion within a narrow range. You can't be trying to cover several topics in one letter or dialogue. Stick to one main point, and try to find areas of agreement, where your suggestions dovetail into the Congressperson's stated value system.

Writing politicians requires patience because it’s likely you will be unsatisfied and frustrated. But you want them to assess your point of view, and you also want to become a known quantity – that is, someone who has a rational intelligent point of view.

If you have a legislator or Congressperson who advocates a rational point of view, then a letter endorsing that point of view is a good idea. Ask what you, as a citizen, can do to draw support to the proposal by that representative.

WRITING TO NEWSPAPERS

Once you have engaged dialogues with your elected officials, your next avenue of activism is writing letters to local print media, especially the daily and weekly newspapers in your community. These should be no more than 200 words and should be a response to some news item you have seen in the paper about prohibition, police behavior, harsh sentencing, the impact on the community, etc. Depending on the volume of mail/email a paper receives, you may have a 1 in 4 chance of getting published, so perseverance is key.

For a great article about Letter Writing As Activism from sold-out “Activism Special” Cannabis Culture Magazine #65, see here.

RADIO TALK SHOWS

Most communities have radio talk shows. These, too, are useful avenues to advocate an end to prohibition whenever subjects like crime, prisons, reducing budgets, drugs, inner cities, etc. are discussed. Again, there will be times you are put on hold and the host does not get to you by the end of the show, and many times the phone lines are full up and you can't even get in the queue to speak on the air, but eventually you will get on the radio. Have your ideas written down in point form, be VERY brief, and get what you want to say done in 30 seconds. Usually radio talk shows allow you one statement, the host or guest gets a rejoinder, and then it’s on to the next caller, or a commercial. Don't waste any time saying "I love your show," or "I'd like to say hello to your guest," – you are wasting your precious airtime with meaningless pleasantries. Go immediately to your points(s).

This is also a great way for people to get active and educate others when they’re forced to keep a relatively low profile because of their job, kids, or any other risk factor. That’s because you only need to give your name to be on air, and you can simply use your middle name if you’ve got reason to be cautious where you live. As long as your message is powerful, informative and understandable, you’re having a positive impact.

PROTESTS AND RALLIES

At some point you may want to organize a protest or a rally. This could be at the office of an elected official, in front of City Hall, or the Statehouse if you live near it. Here are three excellent articles about "How To Hold a Rally" and "Rally Tools" from Cannabis Culture Magazine “Activism Special” #65, plus a Hempfest article from the same issue:

How to Hold a Pot Protest, Rally or March

Rally Tools

How To Stage A Hempfest

Pot TV: High Society with David Malmo-Levine – “Rally Do’s and Don’ts”

It’s surprisingly difficult to get more than a few dozen people to appear at a protest or rally. You can promote on Facebook (because it’s a specific event with a specific purpose) and put posters up, but turnout is considered good if you get only 25-50 people to come. The protest should be at a time when passersby will see your signs and hear your chants. The chants should never be rude, they should be brief and to the point – “No More Drug War”, “Cannabis Saves Lives”, “Prohibition Doesn’t Work”, or anything that can be easily understood by the people who will hear it.

Signs should be legible, most importantly. I prefer computer and machine made signs, using solid, thick, bold fonts. Hand painted signs are too amateur appearing for my tastes, and are often hard to read when passing by, but can look good if very big, solid lettering is used.

(Photo: Jodie in The Province newspaper)

If the media chooses to cover the rally or protest, the signs will convey your message to thousands who see you on TV or in the newspaper, so those signs should be very succinct and very readable. See photos of a December 2011 anti-prohibition protest held in Vancouver here and a similar protest in 2009 here.

April 20th rallies are popular now, but do not contain much of a political message and are largely attended by many teenagers. Young counter-culture teenagers being shown surreptitiously smoking marijuana makes a dubious political statement.

For rallies that have a political purpose, participants should dress respectably in office-suitable apparel, with clear legible signs, and be well groomed. Appearance is important – the message needs to be appealing to the most people possible. You need to convert the people who read newspapers and watch the TV news, mostly people over 45, conservative, older people.

The hippies and the counter culture agree with you already, but they don't vote generally. People who read newspapers (real paper ones, not online) and people who watch the local TV news or listen to talk radio generally vote. If you want to change minds, not only do your ideas need to be carefully chosen, but your clothes, your appearance, your demeanor, your language and your signs need to appeal to the conservative, older people who see you while driving by in their cars, or on the TV news, or in a newspaper.

STUDENT & CAMPUS ACTIVISM

If you are attending high school, college or university, motivating your fellow students to political awareness and political action should be part of your activism. However, it should only be a part of it. You want to influence the greater world beyond your school.

You can however, start an "Anti-Prohibition League" or Anti-Prohibition Club on campus, such as a Students For Sensible Drug Policy groups (www.ssdp.org and www.cssdp.org). A "Legalize Cannabis" club is too narrow and will appeal to greatly to a stoner mentality, and doesn't challenge the problem in a philosophically consistent way. Legalizing marijuana is a goal, true, but it isn't the heart of the problem. The problem is prohibition, and no prohibition is ever effective, just or rational. I believe for example that all prohibitions on personal choice are wrong and indefensible. Prohibitions on guns, sex, drugs, plants, property, abortion, gambling, sexual orientation, dancing, music, media and communication, manufacturing anything, are all wrong. Personal choice is limited to the non-violence principle, personal bodily and mental autonomy, and property rights.

But for the sake of your school club or association, prohibition refers to the government policy of banning or criminalizing certain consumed substances.

A club would do several activities. It would invite speakers to come lecture and educate your group and the larger student body about the issues surrounding prohibition. It would have a booth during clubs week. It would advocate for any anti-prohibition politicians (like Ron Paul) running for office in the school year, and club members would be encouraged to volunteer for these political campaigns. It would seek to have student leadership resist rules or regulations that require the expulsion of students who use or advocate marijuana. It would seek to address the laws that restrict or prohibit student aid to people with drug convictions.

It is important that this club not degenerate into a pot-smoking club. All the indulging, if desired, should occur after serious work has been expended to get necessary political activism done that day.

All schools have newspapers. You should be writing anti-prohibition articles and attempting to get them published in the school paper. Many colleges and universities house a community radio station. Try to get an Anti-Prohibition Radio show. This could be a one or two hour show where you read articles and news items from Norml.org or StopTheDrugWar.org and play anti-prohibition songs, of which there are many. ("Bush Doctor", "Legalize It", newer marijuana music – there are dozens and dozens of songs if you check around.)

GET INVOLVED WITH POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS

For the first five months of 2012, the most vital political activity for those who want to end the drug war has to be, without any exception, supporting Congressman Ron Paul in his bid for the Republican nomination for President. If you do not know about the greatest man ever to advocate for an end to the drug war in the history of US politics, please read my previous blogs here and here for video and details about Ron Paul and his views on abolishing the office of drug czar, abolishing the DEA, ending all federal drug laws, and pardoning all non-violent drug offenders in US prisons, including me.

Joining the Ron Paul campaign in your state will give you experience working on phone banks, holding up signs, handing out literature, working on an honorable, principled campaign with the ideal of our cause firmly part of the campaign. Plus, you will meet many other highly motivated activists. Ron Paul never hides his belief the drug war is wrong; the Constitution, he says, makes no allowance for a federal drug war or federal drug laws or federal drug agencies or people in federal prisons for drug use. He believes all state medical marijuana laws should never experience obstruction or contradiction from the federal government.

The Republican race for the Presidential nomination will get down to Mitt Romney vs. Ron Paul by Super Tuesday in March (March 6th). The Republicans cannot win without the Ron Paul voters, and the Republicans cannot beat continued-and-expanded-war Obama without Ron Paul as their nominee. If Ron Paul is not the nominee for the Republicans, I will urge you to support the Libertarian Party candidate, the former two-term governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, a fine principled man who repudiates the drug war and would certainly legalize marijuana if elected President.

If you decide to do one thing to end this terrible prohibition, joining the Ron Paul Revolution RIGHT NOW is the most urgent need.

BALLOT INITIATIVES

Other options include gathering signatures. Several states in 2012 have signature gathering drives to put medical marijuana or a legalization of marijuana on the ballot. They will need your help immediately. Read about the states that have drives currently underway at NORML.org or here: http://capwiz.com/norml2/issues/ and contact their organizers so you can get out on the streets, on your campus, or in your neighborhood to gather signatures.

(Photo: Jodie making phone calls for the Prop. 19 ballot initative, Oakland 2010)

Are there any anti-prohibition candidates in your community or your state? It may require you to do some research but you will find some candidates who have some aspect of pro-choice on cannabis in them. Medical marijuana, or legalization, or some aspect of their positions you can find favor with in regards the drug war. They may be small-party candidates who have no realistic chance of victory, but they deserve our support if no major party candidates emerge upholding some of our anti-prohibition values.

Find out about the Libertarian, Constitutionalist or Green Party candidates in the your district or community if the Democrat and Republicans have nothing to offer. These smaller parties value your contributions in money and manpower even more than the major parties. These smaller parties will give you insight into how to run (or not run) a modest budget campaign with limited goals. Since the small party candidates aren't expecting to be elected, their job is to educate the public on their issues, critique the Democrat and Republican candidates, and recruit volunteers and members for future growth and campaigns. Your job is to learn all you can about the political process.

RUNNING FOR OFFICE

There will come a time when you are fired up, fed up, and have no one to vote for that represents your views on prohibition. It might be all your city councilors or county supervisors have let the local police trample over the rights and privacy of the people. It might be police brutality as a result of prohibition. It might be a sheriff who is a crazed drug warrior. It might be a judge who gives pot people long sentences. It might be a position in the statehouse legislature where both the Republican and Democrat demagogue on who is toughest on crime, while neither is smart on crime. It might be your Congressman is a hopeless drug warrior and his opponent is little better.

(Photo: Jodie running for the BC Green Party, 2009)

You might just decide to run for an elected office yourself. If you do, set realistic goals. Your odds of getting elected with major party support, or being part of well-moneyed slate with substantial backing, are candidly very long odds indeed. Your first time out, you simply won't get many votes and you won't get elected. You'll be running as an Independent, a Green, a Libertarian, or other small party. You won't have many volunteers and most money you spend will be your own. You'll need someone to do your paperwork. There are forms to fill out, nominating signatures to gather, and bank accounts to manage. You need to keep track of all your donations and all your campaign expenditures.

Most of your friends will be useless in helping you, but you should try to get $10 and $25 donations from them. Ask people to volunteer and, if they get on board, assign them specific tasks essential to your campaign. Develop a Facebook page and website touting your candidacy. Make them both easily navigable and easy to understand. Look at other candidate templates on the net to find a style or approach you like (Jodie’s 2009 BC Green Party provincial election campaign website design is simple but informative: http://www.jodieformla.ca/).

Generous advance planning is recommended. Good planning saves money, time, effort and error. If you are the candidate, ultimately you are in charge but you need to find one very passionate, committed, reasonable, easy-to-get along-with person who can be your campaign manager. A good campaign manager is your most valuable asset. They need to have time, the organizing skills and a belief in you as the candidate. They need to be good with people, have a calm managerial style, and be good with and knowledgeable about the media.

You need some signs. Get quotes on a 100 corroplast (corrugated plastic signs) measured about 18" x 24" (larger signs, like 24" x 36" or 24" x 48", are better to hold up on busy roads, printed both sides in one color plus black on white). Election supplies can be found at websites online; simply Google "Election sign manufacture".

The best way to efficiently, at no or low cost (your time and the signs cost), get your name out there is to stand on busy roadsides at rush hours or busy traffic periods with your name, the office you are seeking, and your website on a very legible sign. It would pay off if you can get yourself or volunteers to go to main intersections anywhere from 7am to nightfall with your (hopefully easy-to-read, attractive) waterproof signs being held proudly in the air. You'll get thousands of eyes on your signs each hour. Some will check out your website and read your issues. If they like your views, your website will have contact information for them to reach you, and ways for them to leave comments. Respond to those potential supporters immediately, and ask for a small donation or their time as a volunteer.

Even though you probably won't get elected, you will learn a great deal about the political process, voters, campaigning, what the people you meet in your community think about your ideas. The experience will help improve your work on future campaigns, whether for yourself or as a campaign manager or worker in other campaigns. I have run for office on twelve occasions from 1980 to 2008, and Jodie has run as a candidate three times (2005, 2008, 2009), and we did not get elected, but enjoyed the experience very much. It really was hard, grueling work to try to do it right. You have to put yourself out there and take criticism, get feedback, and get ignored by big media, the other candidates, and most voters.

(Photo: Jodie's 2009 BC Green Party election signs)

When you are an independent or small party candidate, a refrain you will here often is "I like your ideas, but you can't win, so I'm voting for Mr. Lesser-of-Two-Evils". It will be frustrating to hear that, but elections are a package deal and voters rarely vote on principle. They tend to vote for the candidate who they see as most likely to defeat the candidate they really hate. Tell those voters to take your shared position on the issue to the candidate that they plan to vote for instead, and make it an issue with them.

Eventually you will get experience, develop a good reputation, and move up from an unknown candidate electioneering in obscurity, to running as a small party (say Green, Libertarian) candidate, to running as a Democrat in a heavily Republican neighborhood – or conversely, an opportunity to run as a Republican in, say, San Francisco or a heavily Democratic neighborhood. Maintaining your principles as you get closer to an actual opportunity to get elected will be the big challenge, but let’s hope you get that challenge!

Participating in an election is a very rewarding experience. To do it right is very draining, very exhausting, and very satisfying. It’s nice to get out there and listen to voters, tell people your ideas, and do the campaigning. But it takes a huge amount of time and energy. Decide if it’s really worth it for you before biting off more than you can chew!

DO WHAT YOU LOVE

Finally, everyone has a creative gift or ability of some useful kind. What is your talent?

If you can sing or are musical, do a music video for your favorite candidate, or if you have a band, contribute a performance night’s funds towards a drug policy reform group. If you are good at developing websites, let activist groups or politicians know you are available free or very cheap to build them a website. If you have organizing skills, offer your expertise to the rally organizers. If you are a graphic artist or graphic designer, offer your skills to design election signs, rally posters, graphic images for a website, website design.

Think of a skill you have and offer it to those in your community who are doing good work. If you are good at earning money but have little time to volunteer, give money to those who are doing the activist work you admire. If you have a car and are a safe driver, offer your driving skills to the rally organizers or election campaigns to drive voters, or to pick up rally supplies.

Everyone who believes in the cause of liberty and an end to prohibition has something valuable to offer. All you need to do is commit.

Now get to work!

Marc Emery #40252-086
FCI Yazoo City – Medium E-1
P.O. Box 5888
Yazoo City, MS
39194

ADDENDUM #1 – Current Political Campaigns to Support

For activists looking to get involved in the most important campaigns in Canada and the USA, here are my recommendations for campaigns that require your immediate attention.

#1 Most Important – Joining the Ron Paul For President campaign. Register Republican to vote in the primary in your state. Paul as President will end the federal drug war, abolish the DEA, pardon all non-violent federal drug offenders, and end the world-wide Drug War. Plus much more to help save America. Never before has our cause had a presidential candidate champion our issue so powerfully. He deserves your support; the president and other candidates certainly don't.

#2 Urgently IMPORTANT – Gather signatures for California's REGULATE MARIJUANA LIKE WINE initiative. This effort is in urgent need of signature gatherers to put a legalization initiative on the ballot in California this November. Go to http://regulatemarijuanalikewine.com to volunteer immediately!!!!

#3 Urgently important for Canadians – In Canada, the federal Liberal Party of Canada has, at their convention only days ago, voted to make LEGALIZING MARIJUANA part of the Liberal Party platform. Now the elected Members of Parliament, Senators and others who make up the Liberal caucus in Ottawa will formulate a policy that reflects this. You should mail the Liberal MP's and Senators and the Liberal Party leader BOB RAE with your advice and suggestions for a safe, regulated but largely free-market regime in marijuana distribution. Visit http://www.Liberal.ca

#4 Important – Colorado activists are gathering signatures to put legalization on the ballot in Colorado this November. To volunteer go to http://legalize2012.com/ to get involved immediately.

#5 In British Columbia, there will be an announcement in February by Dana Larsen that a massive, province-wide signature gathering campaign will be launched to put marijuana legalization to the voters of British Columbia on a ballot in September 2013 or 2014. Organizing will begin shortly and signatures must be gathered in a 90-day period beginning late this fall or early next year. Announcements will be made in about 4-5 weeks. Stay tuned to http://www.CannabisCulture.com for news.

Marc would like to see this article as a 'living document', continually growing with more valuable information. If you have any suggested activism or comments you feel should be added to this piece, please send your suggestions to Jodie@cannabisculture.com or Jeremiah@cannabisculture.com

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Choosing the next President of the United States begins in Iowa in mere weeks. For the cannabis culture, 25 million people in the United States, there is only one option: Ron Paul.

For 15 years Ron Paul has been introducing bills every year in Congress to legalize marijuana, legalize industrial hemp, allow medical marijuana defences in federal court, and end the budget and office of the Drug Czar. Read more about Ron Paul's stance on cannabis and the drug war here, here, here, and here.

In speeches and televised debates Ron Paul is not afraid to say he believes the US federal government should end the drug war and repeal all federal laws prohibiting the production and consumption of all drugs, certainly including marijuana.

Listen to Ron Paul speak for himself on the issue: (VIDEOS POSTED FOR VIEWING AT BOTTOM OF PAGE)

Marijuana debate: Ron Paul vs. Barack Obama

Ron Paul: End Marijuana Prohibition Now!

Ron Paul on Marijuana, Prohibition, and Personal Freedom

Ron Paul vs. Mitt Romney, Meeting the Same Medical Marijuana Patient

You'll never meet a candidate for President of greater integrity and honesty. You'll never meet a candidate for the most powerful office on earth who is more qualified and intelligent than Ron Paul. Look at the other options; would you prefer any of them instead?

His beliefs are that the US should withdraw all its troops from foreign shores, and that the US cannot police the world. He wants passionately to end the drug war and the surveillance state. He wants to get those who have committed non-violent drug offenses out of jails and into a productive existence in a better and freer America. He believes citizens are sovereign and that the government has become a dangerous police state.

Ron Paul believes in the people of America, the ordinary citizen, and his policies reflect a treasured commitment to liberty, individual freedom, the sovereignty of the individual – unlike the current President, who has embraced the cynical, corrupted cronyism of the elites.

Don't believe the lies – check out www.RonPaulMyths.com!

And Ron Paul is an incredibly decent man. I have known about Ron Paul since I read about him in Reason magazine in 1980, and he has never betrayed my support of him or his belief in individual freedom, sound finances, the liberty of the people.

Jodie and I have been active supporters of Ron Paul for President since 2006. We were hosts of a show on Ron Paul radio, printed tens of thousands of Ron Paul For President 2008 hand-outs, brochures, posters, and stickers, made voter registration pavilions, put him on the cover of Cannabis Culture Magazine and made a RON PAUL FOR PRESIDENT centrefold, and much more.

VIDEO: Marc And Jodie: We Love Ron Paul! (2007 campaign)

Cannabis Culture Magazine #69, cover & centerfold for Ron Paul:

Photos of the Ron Paul pavilion we had set up in downtown Vancouver in 2007: view here on Facebook!

(Photo: Marc and Jodie at their pavilion, 2007)

There is no man I believe in more on this whole planet more than Ron Paul.

It is with this urgency and passion I ask you to join with Ron Paul and his campaign for President. I want you to register to vote Republican so you can support him in the Republican Presidential nomination. All the other Republican candidates are lunatics or dangerously wrong for America. The Democrat candidate Barack Obama is a terrible punisher of our culture and must be defeated – but he must be defeated by Ron Paul, not the other NeoCon war hawks and prohibitionists who are running for the Republican nomination.

25 million of us in the US cannabis culture can make a difference. Ron Paul has campaign organizations in all 50 states; please sign up, volunteer, and give money to help this man save America. Ron Paul will win in Iowa. Then he will win in many of the primaries throughout the United States, but it will require huge amounts of money and an army of millions. You should Register Republican to vote for Ron Paul in the primary in your state.

I believe when Ron Paul wins the Republican nomination, he will choose former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson as his running mate. Governor Johnson is a wise and intelligent believer in liberty and an end to the drug war. He will make a worthy successor to Ron Paul should the great man die while in office.

Do not sit on the sidelines in this primary season. Do not let cynicism and indifference ruin our chances to change America profoundly for the better. In California last year, our culture was betrayed by traitors and prohibition-profiteers within our culture. If Proposition 19 had passed, millions of Californians would be growing and producing marijuana under state law, and the DEA and President Barack Obama would have been helpless to stop it – they couldn't win a war against the biggest, most populated state in the nation. Now the situation in California is in crisis because of that treason and indifference within our culture during the Proposition 19 vote last November, and President Obama is now showing his vicious contempt for our people, as he does for all Americans.

The contrast between the integrity and principles and policies of liberty proposed by Ron Paul versus the surveillance, control, warfare prison punishment state espoused by Barack Obama and the other Republican candidates is stark. Please go to Ron Paul's campaign website, sign up to help, and join with me and millions of other Ron Paul soldiers in ending the drug war and the cannabis prohibition. This primary season, there is only one man who can do it – who will do it – but he needs us to fulfill this mission.

When the fate of America and our cannabis culture were at stake in the critical time from December 2011 to November 2012, what will you tell your heirs and future generations you did when the need was greatest?

Ron Paul for President. 100% Yes. Join your state's Ron Paul for president campaign now, and let's get to work on the decisive battle ahead.

www.RonPaul2012.com

Marc Emery #40252-086
FCI YAZOO CITY MEDIUM E-1
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
P.O. BOX 5888
YAZOO CITY, MS 39194

Some of the great things Ron Paul will do for our culture alone:

• End The Drug War
• Legalize Industrial Hemp
• Allow Medical Marijuana Laws
• Pardon All Non-violent Drug Offenders (that includes Marc!)
• Abolish The DEA and Drug Czar Office

For more reasons to support Ron Paul as the Republican candidate and to become President of the United States, check out these handouts Marc and Jodie distributed during the last election campaign!
(Click to enlarge)

Read these supporting articles:

– Seattle Weekly: Why Does This Canadian Pot Seed Dealer Support Ron Paul?

– Marc's massive 2006 study of all US Congress votes for Cannabis Culture Magazine #63 showed that Ron Paul was the #1 supporter of our culture.

– From Marc's prison blog of April 18th, 2011:

I also urge my American friends to support the Presidential nomination campaigns of Congressman Ron Paul and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. These two men are great men, fully behind the repeal of cannabis prohibition, and do not retreat from saying so. They need our full support, in primary votes, in campaign contributions, in volunteer efforts, fundraising, and sign carrying. I cannot stress this too much. Ron Paul was the real man of Hope in 2008, but the false Hope was elected instead. Ron Paul is the greatest man of our time, a champion of the Constitution and has opposed every aspect of the drug war since first elected to Congress in 1974. He is co-sponsor of bills legalizing personal possession of cannabis , industrial hemp, medical marijuana, the Truth in Trials Act, ending the Drug Czar's budget – simply every aspect of the federal drug war, Ron Paul has opposed it. [Marc's massive study of all US Congress votes for Cannabis Culture Magazine #63 showed that Ron Paul was the #1 supporter of our culture. View that article here.]

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Dearest Miss: This was such a good week! You were magnificent in capturing the zeitgeist of the current politics affecting Canadians. In the last two weeks alone you've been quoted in newspapers, appeared on TV in Vancouver, were interviewed on Toronto and Vancouver radio, did a London, England podcast and the Free Talk Live radio broadcast (talking about your upcoming appearance at the prestigious New Hampshire Liberty Forum on February 23-26), and confirmed a Sun TV news appearance for Monday, and a radio interview in your hometown Kamloops Thursday.

Even I got in on the current big debate. On Thursday, November 23rd, four previous Vancouver mayors issued a call to legalize marijuana and end cannabis prohibition, particularly imploring the Canadian Prime Minister Harper not to proceed with mandatory minimum jail sentences for cannabis under Bill C-10, which is likely to pass in the current Canadian Conservative-controlled Parliament.

The news department of CTV news, a major television network, asked you for my opinion of this statement from the four former mayors, then showed the remarks I issued from Yazoo federal prison on that night's TV news broadcast, and published me in the online CTV news story too.

SEE VIDEO BY CLICKING HERE, VIEWING AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE, OR GOING HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgfvWOBBxoY

On Friday morning, the Province newspaper led their Letters to the Editor page with my full letter and remarks under the bold headline, "Politicos only say war on drugs is a failure after they’ve quit", and a photo of you with the massive FREE MARC banner in the background. In my letter I impugn the integrity of the current elected officeholders in Canada and the US who refuse to concede to the democratic will to legalize marijuana and recognize the folly of prohibition.

Right: Marc's LTE in The Province (click to view)

While it's hopeful that four former mayors have made crystal clear the urgency and necessity of ending prohibition to restore justice, the safety of our streets and our individual freedom to choose, it remains disturbing that virtually no politician currently in elected office at any level advocates this.

It is a political irony that these former mayors, former presidents of Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, former governors, hundreds of other previously elected and now former officials throughout the world, along with hundreds of former police officers, all declare the war on drugs a counter-productive failure, a gift to organized crime and a threat to the stability of several nations, but none of them acted on this while in the political authority of their elected or appointed office.

There is an unfathomable disconnect between actually holding political office and doing the right thing when it comes to ending prohibition. Even with majorities in the U.S. and Canada favouring the legalization of marijuana, no serious action occurs in the parliaments, statehouses, legislatures and congresses of Canada, Mexico or the United States to further this desire. Nor is any rational explanation for this dereliction of democratic will and common sense offered by the authorities in office. Why?

– Marc Emery, U.S. federal prison, Yazoo City, Miss.

As the media continued to cover the news about the four former mayors joining Stop The Violence BC to condemn prohibition, and question the current Vancouver Mayor, Gregor Robertson, in this regard, they noticed he had added his voice to the call and issued the following Tweet online Thursday night:

@MayorGregor: Good to see 4 Vancouver ex-mayors calling for end of cannabis prohibition. I agree, we need to be smart and tax/regulate.

The news coverage of that Tweet got a number of quotes from the current mayor about how prohibition is a failure. And this happened right after my recent blog called him and others out for never publicly endorsing legalization despite knowing he ought to. So now he is on record endorsing legalization as the newly re-elected mayor. Oh, my sweet wife, this is wonderful to see!

On that very same Friday, you held signs up and delivered slogans with your enviable lung power at an appearance by the Prime Minister and the Premier of BC at Telus Science World in Vancouver. Your message that prohibition only benefits the politicians, police and gangsters was the dominant media talking point of the day, thanks to you, despite both the PM and Premier being there announcing funding for the facility.

Your presence even had the media grilling the Prime Minister on the crime bill, and while he rejected your assertions categorically, as he insists always on doing, you had the media being your conduit to the PM! Fantastic! I loved hearing your appearance on the CTV news segment about the mayors and Harper's visit, when you played it over the phone for me. Oh, dear Jodie, you've done such a great job. Almost every media outlet had your message, succinct and to the point.

[See Jodie's quotes from the news stories here.]

SEE VIDEO BY CLICKING HERE, VIEWING AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE, OR GOING HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L890AwjQlRw

You are so inspiring! Together, Team Emery made tremendous political impact in these last few days! And to top it all off, on that Friday night, as part of the Thanksgiving weekend concerts here at the prison, my rock and roll band THE YAZOO 5, played a 55-minute performance from 7pm to 8pm. Our nine-song set went very well, I had a wonderful time! I knew our songs and had them thoroughly practiced. We were outdoors with fully amplified electric equipment and were deliciously loud on a clear evening with 65 degree Fahrenheit temperature, just the right amount of light, playing under an open big sky. My bass guitar work was so improved, I wasn't even nervous at any time throughout the concert or even before.

Our band is made up of TC, a black Mississippian, originally of Detroit, who loves soul, country and R&B; Sapp, a terrific black drummer from Florida who picks up on an unfamiliar song immediately; Victor, also our vocalist and wonderful rhythm guitarist, an Hispanic American who loves rock and country; my good friend Terry, the virtuoso Hendrix guitarist with 20 years of professional performing experience (who knows how to play almost every song ever!); and I, who, after six months of playing bass, have done three concerts now and am getting pretty good! TC is a brilliant singer and does soulful vocals on Stormy Monday, Hotel California, I Can See Clearly Now, and Red House. Victor does wonderful country vocals on Way Out Here, Out in the Backwoods, Killing Time, and he finally nailed the vocals to Voodoo Child and Purple Haze.

My only disappointment is that I'd love to put on a show with the band every weekend – it's so thrilling. Our next concerts will, in fact, be over the Christmas and New Year's Day holiday weekends. We'll be adding Don't Stop Believing (Journey), Blue on Black (Kenny Wayne Shepherd), Don't Blink (Kenny Chesney), and Sitting on the Dock of the Bay (Otis Redding) for those shows, and probably dropping Purple Haze. I also know how to play bass on White Room, Wind Cries Mary, Money, All Along the Watchtower, Sunshine of Your Love, Johnny B. Goode, I Shot The Sheriff, Stir It Up, No Woman, No Cry, and Tightrope. Terry knows the lead on all those songs too, so we might bring some of those out in the new year.

I've just finished a terrific 850-page time travel novel that had me absorbed over eight days, written by Stephen King, called 11/22/63. I enthusiastically recommend this book. In a sleepy town in Maine (where else for Stephen King?), a modest teacher named Jake is shown a time travel portal at the back of the diner owned by his friend Al. Through this portal, you go from the year 2011 back to September, 1958. Always the same day, same time, same place. Al has been going back to September 1958 hundreds of times over the past few years to buy meats at 1958 prices for his diner. With each trip into 1958, Al does change the past, and it's fixed in time, until the next jaunt back into '58, and then the past is reset back to the status quo. And when he returns from 1958 through the portal, only two minutes has elapsed in 2011 time, no matter how long Al or Jake has stayed in the past. Al gets it in his head to go back to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from killing President John Kennedy, which Al hopes will prevent the Vietnam War, the assassinations of M.L. King and Robert Kennedy. But by 1962, while shadowing Oswald, living off the winnings from gambling on sports he knows the outcome of, Al gets irreversible cancer, and has to return to 2011 to recruit English teacher Jake to do the job.

What I've told you is established in just the first 40 pages, the next 800 are engrossing, thrilling and disturbing. Throughout the book the reader is teased with the premise "if you could, would you, should you?" The past is obdurate – a new word I learned, meaning the past resists changes. The past doesn't want to be disturbed, and puts roadblocks in the way of those change agents who come into the past. With every page I was thinking about the implications of the premises established by this book, so when I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it.

It's also a touching love story, Jodie, and it made me think of us. The distance between us, the time (955 days) remaining until we're together again, the strength of our commitment, and the romance we have always had. Time and space. I love my incredible Mrs. Emery!

And when I wasn't thinking about the implications of changing the past, it was because those nine songs for my concert were in my head, morning, noon and nighttime too! Waking up and as I fell to sleep, I could hear my bass lines to Killing Time, Way Out Here, Stormy Monday, and the others. That's something new in my life, Miss, that I'm really enjoying, this hearing songs I am working on in my head at all times of the day.

Can't wait to see you on December 10th and 11th! Congratulations on your terrific work getting the Prime Minister's attention, and getting our message into the news. I'm excited to have you seek a Liberal or NDP nomination in the 2015 election. Qualified as I feel I am, I might have too much baggage to seek elected office successfully – but you, everyone loves you, Miss, you are so classy and so wise for your age. I am so honoured to be your husband!

Forever your grateful prince,
Marc

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In my 20-plus months in prison for this 'legalization' offense (to quote DEA head Karen Tandy), I've received about 3,000 letters from supporters, 95% of whom I have never met, and responded to about 1,250 of them.

When I was at Sea-Tac in Seattle last year awaiting my sentencing, I received 1,500 letters, and responded, remarkably, to about 700 in six months. Because prisoners at federal detention centers do not get to go outside in a yard, I would use up to five hours a day on writing letters, about four letters a day, but sometimes up to seven letters written in response, or as few as three. Plus I had three hours or more of Corrlinks (prison “email”), and I wrote 15 chapters of my autobiography at Sea-Tac .

I was at Sea-Tac from May 20th to October 18th, 2010. The volume of letters peaked when I received, in one day, 45 letters on my 21st day in solitary confinement (June 25th). In the 21 days in solitary, I received over 400 letters! Catching up was very hard to do!

From October 19th to November 18th I was in transit at the South Nevada Detention Center in Pahrump, Nevada and the Oklahoma City Transfer Hub of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP); I received 20 letters and was able to respond to seven letters.

I was at D Ray James Immigrant federal prison from November 18th to April 4th, and received 800 or so letters in that time. I was able to respond to about 400 while there. At DRJ, I had no Corrlinks email, so I spent about four hours a day writing three to four letters a day. I was able to go into the yard for recreation and I had a job at the library pretty well every day for six hours (morning, afternoon, evening) doing legal work for other non-American and illegal immigrant prisoners. I also did a weekly newsletter largely about the ineptitude of the private prison management who ran DRJ. From January to March, 10 issues came out as a blog on CannabisCulture.com and FreeMarc.ca, and a copy of the most recent two or three editions went out to each correspondent I wrote that week.

From April 4th to April 19th, I was back at the Oklahoma City transfer hub on my way to Mississippi. I've been at Yazoo City medium-security prison now for nearly seven months (April 20th to present), have received about 600 letters, and responded to only about 160. I know, that’s a drop! And when I don't write back, I get fewer replies, of course. If I write back, I almost always get a letter in return. My excuse is that I have a music regimen of bass guitar practice that takes up three hours a day, a job four nights a week in the music room, recreation for two hours daily outside, and three hours of email daily – so I have, I admit, only written about two letters a day, but at least they are long, detailed letters of significance!

I hope each of my correspondents that receive a letter from me know it’s personalized, detailed and completely original and unique to that person's questions, comments and life story. I have received letters from Australia, Norway, Iceland, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Indonesia, Peru, the Philippines, Finland, Russia, Costa Rica, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Norway, but most come from the United States, then Canada. The only negative or hateful letter I have received is from Sara Glatt in Amsterdam, a woman I once gave $4,000 (in 2004) to help her get her ibogaine hospice off the ground again after she was raided by police. That brings to mind the phrase 'no good deed shall go unpunished'. She's been ungrateful and vindictive ever since! She wrote me here at Yazoo to say I "deserve to rot in jail". Whew! Glad it’s just one nasty letter out of 3,000.

I try to answer the serious letters that come to me here, but it’s simply not possible to keep up. Each letter I write takes me about 90 to 120 minutes, is usually four to eight pages long. I simply can't write a note that says "thank you for your letter"; I try to make it worth their while to get a serious bit of correspondence in return. Besides, if I'm going to write a letter, it’s going to be a keeper.

Sometimes people understand if I only write them infrequently. Len Preslesnik of Holland, Michigan, writes me every day! Len has written me every day for 16 months now! (Len has sent me about 400 of the 3,000 letters.) Not only does he write me a letter, or postcard (always of his hometown Holland, Michigan), every day, but he also includes photocopies of newspaper articles, Larson cartoons, editorials, cartoons, or magazine articles in every letter! Additionally, he decorates each envelope with anti-government slogans highlighted by a brilliantly selected graphic. I have sent home to Jodie 25 or 30 of the best "Len" envelopes so far. I only write Len once every two or three months. He's fine with that. He sees my blogs and Jodie's weekly YouTube show, so he's up to date on what’s going on with me. I read all his letters, clippings, and share them with my cellie (cellmate) Wally. I have to ask Len in my next letter to find out where Ted Rall's cartoons are showing up and maybe he can photocopy me some of Rall's latest political stuff. Len used to include Ted's cartoons in the envelopes I got last year at Sea-Tac, but not so much this past year.

Vivian McPeak of the Seattle Hempfest has organized their volunteers into a prison correspondence unit. Once a month they are going to write a prisoner in the US and try to offer encouragement and greetings. It’s a praiseworthy effort and I was the first beneficiary of their prisoner-letter-writing-bee. I received 14 letters in one envelope, including one from Vivian himself. Vivian is a great activist; the Seattle Hempfest is such a staggeringly large and monumental endeavor, and it has all been done by volunteers for 20 years now. Vivian has been involved in all 20 of these annual events. I know Jodie always feels so welcome when she speaks there on our behalf, and is treated so well by Vivian, Sharon Whitsun and all the Hempfest volunteers.

Sharon wrote me a letter among the 14 I just received, but she also writes me a wonderful, heavily illustrated-with-photographs letter every few months or so. Each one delightfully recounts her most recent adventures as the physical display co-ordinator of Hempfest, or going on zombie walks with her son, or visiting her folks in California, or going to the Playboy mansion in LA at a Marijuana Policy Project wingding. Sharon is a cancer survivor, pulling off a miracle in 2009 and 2010, when it looked like she might succumb to the dreaded killer disease. It’s truly an honour to receive these loving and detailed letters that take me into her life and reality. Her letters and photos are so good I believe I'm there experiencing her life just a bit. The last letter showed in photographs how Hempfest is constructed over a seven-day period, an amazing mechanical and logistical undertaking!

Another remarkable person is Steve D'Angelo of the Harborside Medical Center in San Jose. Steve is on TV these days in a reality show about his state-of-the-art medical marijuana center called WEED WARS, which I hope hasn't gotten him into trouble with the DEA, although I worry, because a TV show is risky that way. Over the most recent 12 months now, I've received probably no fewer than 100 letters from patrons of his dispensary. My understanding is that Steve gives a small discount if you write a letter to me from Harborside; that’s the return address, "2106 Ringwood Ave, San Jose 95131" on virtually every letter I have ever received from San Jose, California! I think Harborside has a giant FREE MARC poster. It’s a terrific gesture of support from Steve D'Angelo to have his clients write me.

Some letters have some built in drama! Earlier this week I received an 18-page letter written over a period of time from grandmother Jessica Thomas of Kansas City, Missouri. On the third page there was a splash of blood on it! While in the midst of writing the letter on her kitchen table, Jessica took her grandchildren outside for a walk and when she returned, a pistol-wielding intruder had kicked in her front door and aimed to take her and the grandkids hostage and rob the place! The assailant cracked the pistol over her head, blood gushing out, broke her arm in a struggle, and Jessica gave several kicks in a fight to the attacker’s groin, whereupon (howling in distress) the attacker fled, empty handed. Her ordeal got covered in the news. In fact, if you Google "Granny Sore Balls", you can read all about it! What's really remarkable (aside from the blood on page three, the letter was under her during the struggle!) is that Jessica felt it was the most blessed thing, as neighbours, friends and so many people came by to help and be supportive over the following months. She even held up a sign for a photographer saying "I Forgive You" to the intruder. Her extensive letter was written in five parts over six months.

Many letters I have received, and others I have written in response, have been the springboard for blog essays of mine. I have one correspondent from Ottawa, Canada, who has written me every three weeks or so since 2004 when I was incarcerated at Saskatoon Correctional on a three-month sentence for passing one joint. He includes $100 with every letter (since I've been in jail, he sends the money to Jodie to help out), and he offers me brilliant and extraordinary information and perspectives that I have often used in my essays and blogs over the last seven years. He has access to an incredible wealth of material, documents, books, quite stupendous, and he is a brilliant thinker who inspires me with every incredible letter – and I don't know his name or identity, he always signs off as “A Fan”. For over seven years he has supplied me with inside information, hope, inspiration, and by now, over $6,000 in donations. He reads everything I write, so he's reading this. Thank you, dear friend; as you know, you've inspired me greatly.

I am never short of great reading material. Competing for my time is my daily bass guitar practice, my music studies and Monday night studio rehearsals, three hours of email a day (at $3 an hour!), reading my letters of support, and two to three hours writing letters. I receive roughly 30 magazine subscriptions, some weekly, monthly or bi-monthly, for a total of 50 magazines a month! I read each one thoroughly. I receive MacLeans, Time, Vanity Fair, Architectural Digest, Newsweek, Bloomberg Business Week, Islands, Caribbean Life & Travel, Conde Nast Traveler, Backwoods Home, Wired, Discover, Guitar Player, Guitar World, Bass Player, Premiere Guitar, National Geographic, Guitar Aficionado, Reminisce, Reminisce Extra, Mad, Rolling Stone, Harpers, UTNE Reader. I get the NY Times daily and I read it thoroughly, although it arrives about four to ten days after it’s issued. I read two books weekly, and I get all 52 different titles of the new DC Comics series monthly, and one or two graphic novels each week!

All the books, comics and magazines I receive get circulated to the other inmates in my unit (120 guys in here) after I have read them. This is important because few inmates get magazines, none get comic books, and few new books ever enter the prison. All the books in the prison library are older ex-library books donated from local church sales and that sort of thing. I try to read any magazine within 48 hours after I receive it.

Supporters have sent me guitar song books, magazine subscriptions, books (they must be from a publisher or online bookshop like Amazon), and I am grateful for all I have received (and circulated to other inmates), but I must especially thank my dear and unceasingly supportive friend Dana Larsen for many magazine subscriptions, all my comics, and most of the books I have! My wonderful wife Jodie has sent me numerous subscriptions and dozens of books also. Thank you to everyone who writes to me and sends support. It makes surviving this ordeal possible.

If you want to write a letter to Marc, read the brief guidelines HERE at FreeMarc.ca and send letters or books to this address:

MARC EMERY #40252-086
FCI YAZOO CITY – MEDIUM E-1
P.O. BOX 5888
YAZOO CITY, MS
39194

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The threshold of petitioners for an acknowledgement by the White House was raised to 25,000 signatories by early October, the exception being those petitions that had been started under the original rules. The petition to give me a pardon (based on the explicitness of DEA's statement that my crime was legalization advocacy and financing, no mention of distribution of seeds) reached 7,500 signatures in 30 days and qualifies for a response, which is due shortly.

A pardon is desirable for two reasons: it would free me immediately, and it would permit me to return to the United States to speak to those supporters in America who would wish to meet me and hear me speak. Once I am deported from the USA on the "early release" completion of my sentence on July 9, 2014, I will be barred from entering the United States at any future time.

I'd like to thank all those who took the time to sign on to the petition. Newspapers and radio in Canada covered the petition to have me pardoned, and they’ve been asking Jodie for news about the response from the White House when it comes. Those who posted the links on their Facebook or Twitter get special thanks. The required 5,000 signatures took only nine days to achieve. Tommy Chong made a charming video for Pot TV urging people to sign on to the petition. In fact, I was speaking to Tommy on the phone only moments before he made the video, which can be seen on YouTube, as he came by the Cannabis Culture Headquarters to check in and help with the petition drive.

The other possibility for an earlier release is for me to be transferred home. In March 2013, 16 months from now, I can make an application to the US Department of Justice requesting, once again, a transfer back to Canada to serve out my sentence. Both the US Department of Justice and the Canadian Ministry of Public Safety must approve this request. If I had been accepted for transfer earlier this winter when I first applied, I would have been eligible in Canada for release on parole in on November 16, 2011 as a first-time non-violent offender, which means I qualified for release at 1/3 of my sentence in Canada.

As you know, the US Department of Justice refused my transfer application in April this year, even though I qualified under all 26 criteria set out and had over 23 elected representatives from all levels of Canadian government endorse my transfer. It’s thought that the DEA and the Canadian government under Stephen Harper were both hostile to my transfer.

If my transfer request is delivered in April 2013 to the US DOJ, and accepted in June 2013, it would then be necessary for the Canadian government to accept the transfer – which, if approved, might see me back in Canada by November 2013 to February 2014. I would qualify for immediate statutory release upon my return to Canada, but I would be on parole until February 2015. If I am required to wait until the completion of my sentence here (July 9, 2014), there would be no parole requirements when I am delivered to Canada.

The Justice Department, in refusing my transfer to Canada last April, made reference to the seriousness of my crime (advocating legalization), law enforcement opposition, and the work I was doing on behalf of my fellow inmates and my unrelenting public criticism of D Ray James federal prison, a private prison concentration camp for foreigners that I was housed in before I was transferred to Yazoo. The reasoning for the refusal of my transfer back to Canada dispels any doubt about the politics of my imprisonment.

Despite President Obama’s promise of "Hope" and "Change", things aren’t getting better for the cannabis culture under his administration. Evidence can be seen in the official response to the most popular petition, which gathered 74,169 signatures urging the legalization of marijuana, and seven other cannabis-related petitions that reached the threshold for a response. This answer came from the White House Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, former Seattle Police Chief, in the expected unsatisfactory way:

What We Have to Say About Legalizing Marijuana

By Gil Kerlikowske, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
www.WhiteHouse.gov

When the President took office, he directed all of his policymakers to develop policies based on science and research, not ideology or politics. So our concern about marijuana is based on what the science tells us about the drug's effects.

According to scientists at the National Institutes of Health- the world's largest source of drug abuse research – marijuana use is associated with addiction, respiratory disease, and cognitive impairment. We know from an array of treatment admission information and Federal data that marijuana use is a significant source for voluntary drug treatment admissions and visits to emergency rooms. Studies also reveal that marijuana potency has almost tripled over the past 20 years, raising serious concerns about what this means for public health – especially among young people who use the drug because research shows their brains continue to develop well into their 20's.

Simply put, it is not a benign drug.

Like many, we are interested in the potential marijuana may have in providing relief to individuals diagnosed with certain serious illnesses. That is why we ardently support ongoing research into determining what components of the marijuana plant can be used as medicine. To date, however, neither the FDA nor the Institute of Medicine have found smoked marijuana to meet the modern standard for safe or effective medicine for any condition.

As a former police chief, I recognize we are not going to arrest our way out of the problem. We also recognize that legalizing marijuana would not provide the answer to any of the health, social, youth education, criminal justice, and community quality of life challenges associated with drug use.

That is why the President's National Drug Control Strategy is balanced and comprehensive, emphasizing prevention and treatment while at the same time supporting innovative law enforcement efforts that protect public safety and disrupt the supply of drugs entering our communities. Preventing drug use is the most cost-effective way to reduce drug use and its consequences in America. And, as we've seen in our work through community coalitions across the country, this approach works in making communities healthier and safer.

We're also focused on expanding access to drug treatment for addicts. Treatment works. In fact, millions of Americans are in successful recovery for drug and alcoholism today. And through our work with innovative drug courts across the Nation, we are improving our criminal justice system to divert non-violent offenders into treatment.

Our commitment to a balanced approach to drug control is real. This last fiscal year alone, the Federal Government spent over $10 billion on drug education and treatment programs compared to just over $9 billion on drug related law enforcement in the U.S.

Thank you for making your voice heard. I encourage you to take a moment to read about the President's approach to drug control to learn more.

Resources:
National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Marijuana Facts (ONDCP)
Drug Abuse Warning Network (HHS)
Treatment Episode Data Set (HHS)
National Survey on Drug Use and Health (HHS)

Kerlikowske says "science" and "facts" will guide the policy, not "ideology" and "politics", then proceeds to ignore any science and medical comparison and sticks entirely to politics and ideology – the ideology of prohibition!

The petition request to legalize marijuana, and the request for my pardon, both need to be seen in regard to certain facts. Not only have Canadian Prime Ministers Paul Martin (pot brownies), Pierre Trudeau (hashish), Kim Campbell (marijuana), and Premiers Ralph Klein (of Alberta), Jean Charest (of Quebec), Glen Clark (of BC), and Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson – plus many others – variously smoked, grown, eaten, and enjoyed marijuana, but a host of prominent elected US officials have also done the same, including President Obama, who commented in his book "Dreams from My Father – A Story of race and Inheritance" that "Pot had helped, and booze: and maybe a little blow when you could afford it… and if the high didn't solve whatever it was that was getting you down, it could at least help you laugh at the world's ongoing folly and see through all the hypocrisy and bullshit and cheap moralism."

Read Kerlikowske's response to the legalization petition and see if you can spot 1) hypocrisy, 2) bullshit, and 3) cheap moralism.

The hypocrisy is that the health hazards of marijuana, even the trivial ones he mentions, pale in comparison to the health hazards of hundreds of legal, sanctioned consumed substances like tobacco, alcohol, prescription drugs, fatty foods, over the counter medicines, etc. There are no known fatalities from cannabis consumption, making it one of the safest consumables on the planet considering peanuts, sesame seeds, numerous flowers, nuts, seeds, gourds, fish, shellfish, and other foods can kill certain people from allergic reactions. Sugars, salts, preservatives and additives in our food chain are much more hazardous than cannabis.

The bullshit is that for being involved in cannabis you can serve 5, 10, 15, 20 years or even life in prison, a punishment that is barbaric and extraordinarily cruel because all the hazards inherent in cannabis use result from the government policy of prohibition of cannabis. All the cartel violence, the full prisons, the lucrative corruption of police, prisons, teenagers, the poor, the blacks, Latinos, all who get seduced into the world of growing and selling cannabis do so because of the prohibition on the legal production, sale and use of marijuana.

In my drug abuse prevention class here at Yazoo prison, I asked this question; "Would any of us be here, guards or prisoners, if all these substances were sold legally at retail outlets throughout the community? Isn't this a tragedy and crisis manufactured exclusively by government policy? Doesn't the US criminal justice system put us behind bars for these huge lengths of time because that's precisely the intent? Doesn't the evidence of the last 40 years show anyone looking that prohibition is designed to fill prisons, bankrupt the nation, create gangs and gang violence, diminish our civil liberties and consolidate a police state?"

Needless to say, this line of questioning was regarded as heresy and I was advised to be less vocal about these ideas.

To support this prohibition you have to support evil behavior, the virtual destruction of peaceful society, the depraved violence we see afflicting Mexico, Columbia, our inner cities, the Nazi-like violence by urban SWAT police (over 100 SWAT raids happen each and every day in America), the packed prisons, and the despair and utter heartbreak of millions of American families. Since 1970, over 12 million Americans have been incarcerated for drug use, production or distribution. Each of these 12 million had dozens of family members and loved ones who are also greatly impacted.

What, one must ask, is the point in all this? How can President Obama continue such a prohibition policy when two decades of books, news reports, statistics, dozens of former Presidents throughout the world saying "end prohibition", millions of horror stories and packed jails scream of the failure of prohibition to achieve any desirable goals. In fact, the obvious road of prohibition is to make a decaying police state out of the entire planet!

Prohibition is a corrupt, barbaric and intentional deception. Those, like Kerlikowske, who support it, absolutely know this. President Obama knows the prohibition policy is the death of black America. One in four black Americans are entwined in the revolving doors of the US criminal justice system – in prison, on probation, supervised release, parole, on bail – almost exclusively for drug and drug-related offenses. Certainly 80% of the inmates here at Yazoo federal prison are black Americans, virtually all here for drugs, and guns with drugs. It is the new Jim Crow laws brought to bear after the Civil Rights Act in 1964 finally did what the Emancipation Proclamation did not do100 years later – free the black man and ended slavery.

But there is still slavery. It's here. Prison USA.

At the risk of saying it will take a great white man, Ron Paul, to free millions of black Americans in November 2012, the petitions to legalize marijuana and pardon me give President Obama a chance to re-affirm what he believes. Is it the Obama who wrote "Dreams of my Father", or the Obama who is ramping up the drug war in medical marijuana states to new extremes?

It is the DEA press release issued on the day of my arrest that President Obama is directly endorsing if he keeps me in jail. The DEA press release is specific about why I am in jail, and explains clearly that if you talk about and work towards legalization successfully, they'll invade your country and bring you to their prohibition prison system.

The DEA press release did not ever say I was arrested for selling seeds. The word "seeds" was never used in the DEA press release. What was mentioned over and over again was legalization. Use the word "seeds" in the same press release with "drug kingpin" and what you have is absurdity – albeit a cruel depraved nightmare absurdity that we all get to inhabit, but especially me, and others imprisoned like me.

The DEA tried to ignore and refute the press release but the truth had been exposed. If the reasons the DEA gave for jailing me were so corrupt and embarrassing that they pretend that release doesn’t exist, what does this say about a President and government that agree with the same immoral and anti-democratic edicts that keep me imprisoned? Answer: it says everything.

Under federal legislation in the United States, the DEA is mandated to use whatever means necessary anywhere in the world to combat any person or organization that promotes the legalization of marijuana. It said so right at the bottom of the DEA letterhead the press release was sent out on.

When police smash into homes and terrorize taxpayers and families, shooting people and pets, all over something the majority do not believe should be a crime under law, then we should remember that our leaders, Prime Minister Harper, President Obama, and Mexican President Calderon, favor this sort of carnage and abuse by allowing it to continue.

We must ask ourselves what kind of government would enter into perpetual war against its own people. What type of government denies sick people a medicine, a plant that improves their lives and diminishes misery? What kind of government obstructs scientific research into the truly incredible and scientifically documented healing properties of marijuana? The answers to these questions are obvious and not pretty.

The DEA, who no doubt was the principal bulwark against my transfer to the Canadian prison system, tells us in their own hackneyed words (see DEA Tandy's press release once again) that I was jailed for expressing an idea. The expression of that idea – the legalization of cannabis – is specifically mentioned in that DEA mandate we've all read. This federal laws gives the DEA the legal right to go anywhere in the world to combat legalization initiatives and activities, in the same way the CIA has authority to overthrow governments around the world (Iran 1953, South Vietnam 1965, Chile 1973, Panama 1984). The DEA has offices and agents active in over 90 countries, including Canada, Mexico, Colombia, and Afghanistan.

Essentially the DEA has been given eternal wartime powers on a global scale to fight the demonized herb cannabis. According to US law, any country can be invaded to stop any threat of legalization, just as any state or city or town or US community can be. Most of the world is unaware of this fact. So if Obama refuses the petition to pardon me, he reaffirms this mandate of manifest destiny when he thus says I'll stay in a US federal prison for expressing an idea.

Only an evil nature can support, approve and perpetuate evil acts. And as Canadian Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said about new laws requiring mandatory minimum jail sentences for as few as six marijuana plants, "this is just the beginning." If putting a Canadian in jail for 6, 9, or 12 months for six plants is "just the beginning", try to imagine the "end".

These sadistic politicians and their lackeys do not inhabit the same reality that we civilized people do. Until we understand and publicize this fact, we give them victory by default. Remember, majorities in Canada and the United States support the legalization of marijuana. At least 55% of Canadians want legal marijuana, and now 50% of Americans want legal marijuana.

This is why we fight. It is the right, we are the majority, the enemy is pure evil, and we have a world to rescue from darkness.

Marc Scott Emery
#40252-086
FCI YAZOO CITY – MEDIUM E-1
P.O. BOX 5888
YAZOO CITY, MS
39194

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Hi Miss! This Sunday, October 2nd (in the evening, after your visit), I will perform three Bob Marley songs in concert with the reggae band: "No Woman, No Cry", "I Shot The Sheriff" and "Stir It Up". I continue to practice, learn and rehearse on the bass guitar in my own band, called "Yazoo", for 2-4 hours each day.

CLICK THE IMAGE to sign the Pardon Marc Emery petition!

Tonight in the studio we worked on "Don't Stop Believing", "I Can See Clearly Now", "Purple Haze", "Hotel California", and "Panama" by Van Halen. Our song list for our Thanksgiving Day Concert includes those songs and "Stormy Monday", "The Wind Cries Mary", "Sweet Emotion", "Don't Blink" by Kenny Chesney, "El Paso" by Marty Robbins, "Red House", "Purple Haze", "Freddie's Dead", "Winds of Change", "Dust in the Wind", "Comfortably Numb", and "Money". Quite the eclectic song list!

I read voraciously every day, the weather so far has been conducive to it, virtually a 5-month stretch of brilliant blue skies and warm temperatures. The air here is sweet; Mississippi, if not beset by poverty and historical apartheid that makes impossible a genuine rapprochement between the races, would be a nice place to be. I am attracted to its musical heritage, weather, and even the NPR affiliate, the Mississippi Broadcast Network radio with its homey gardening and cultural programs; it is a shame that after my deportation back to Canada (Hallelujah!), I will be barred from ever visiting these United States.

That is, unless I receive a Pardon from the President or Attorney-General of these United States. I am so excited you have had a "Pardon Marc Emery" petition posted on the White House website here (share this link: http://wh.gov/gFJ). Within 36 hours, it had over 2,500 signatories. 5,000 signatures are required within 30 days for it to get an official response from the White House.

I hope, if there is no limit on the number of signatures from Americans, that 25,000 citizens of the 50 states can be delivered on this petition within 30 days, to prove a depth of support for my repatriation to Canada. A pardon also allows me to return to America as a sympathetic human being to gather and share the American Experience in all its manifestations without chains, handcuffs and leg irons.

I hope you can encourage all my friends and supporters to attach the petition to their Twitter, Facebook and websites to see if we can crack the 25,000 mark within 30 days, or perhaps even a better result. Perhaps, if it does become a viable 'cause celebre', it can get some nominal media attention, as certainly it could be the largest petition urging a pardon for someone in the vast US penal system.

I was pleased that the Sunday, September 25th "Province" newspaper in BC published my letter in regard the Canadian government's repugnant plans for massive increase in incarceration and prison expansion. The population of the prisons will be 95% drug and cannabis users, and the number from our marijuana community will increase by the thousands over the next few years. Cannabis arrests are at a shocking all time high; in 2010, the number of marijuana related arrests for simple possession alone ballooned to 56,870, a 14% increase from 2009. The photograph and subhead that accompanied the letter (seen at right; click to enlarge), which was signed "Marc Emery, Yazoo City Medium Federal Prison, Mississippi", was a nice reminder to myself that I still exist in a Canadian political context.

I'm also excited that the Canadian Liberal Party, under the leadership of interim leader Bob Rae, has declared the war on drugs "an absolute, catastrophic failure" (see quotes here), and that the Liberal Party of Canada seems to be adopting a repudiation of prohibition as central to its opposition to Harper Omnibus Crime Bill (see the Liberal Party's website post "5 Reasons to Oppose the Omnibus Crime Bill"). This is great news. The Liberal party must revitalize itself, and all the science, facts and political momentum buttress their new energy they are applying to this issue.

It is noteworthy that on the federal NDP website, absolutely no opposition to the Omnibus Crime Bill has been articulated. Could the NDP members like Libby Davies have had their opposition to the war on drugs silenced? The NDP is frustrating in its weather-vane-like direction on this issue. Bob Rae cannot retreat from his statement the war on drugs is a complete failure. In one sweeping statement, he has established what the Liberal Party policy is – and it's deserving of our support. If anyone is looking for a reason to join the Liberal Party of Canada, now they have it, and there could not be a better or more significant reason to do so. Anyone who joins must say, "I am impressed by Bob Rae's repudiation of the war on drugs and his statement that it is a complete failure, and wish to be a part of the Liberal Party re-birth."

Of course, the evil Prime Minister Harper and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson promise that this Omnibus Crime Bill called C-10, with its mandatory minimum jail time for as few as six marijuana plants or making a few grams of hashish, "is just the beginning", and that even more ominous and draconian measures are to come.

That's why it is essential to our movement that you keep up the charge, my dear wife. You inspire me and you inspire many. Canadian families will suffer greatly, as their loved ones will be going to prison in much greater numbers in the cannabis community, and you must help them in dealing with these sad eventualities and help them cope. Few of them will get five year sentences for cannabis, but thousands upon thousands will get six months, a year, two years or more in prison. Second offenses get years in jail. Selling and producing other drugs have multiple years in jail under the proposed mandatory minimums. The harm and devastation to Canadian families will be extensive. You'll be needed to lend your compassion and sympathy to them.

The answer, as always, is to get involved in politics. All our people must join or work with a political party and make their voice heard and their participation count – because as we have seen, the prohibitionists are doing that very thing, and getting the results they want.

When I am released in the summer of 2014, you or I will begin campaigning for a nomination in Vancouver Center. Whichever one of us is seen as attractive to the NDP or Liberal Party in Vancouver Center (I don't believe Liberal MP Hedy Fry will run again), we will contest a nomination. Whether you get a nomination or I do, the voters are getting a twofer either way; you and I are a team, and we'll go to Ottawa together and work together and represent a vision of change from the diabolical Conservative agenda of pain, punishment and social control.

In Ontario, the Freedom Party that I founded long ago is making a good showing with 57 candidates on the October 6th provincial election ballot. But there is much work to be done there. Next election, they must get a full slate and more money raised to make serious inroads. Hopefully the many (over thirty!) cannabis activists who found welcome with the Freedom Party will continue to be politically active. I was pleased their money bomb raised over $7,000 for the purchase of TV ads during the election campaign.

I'm wearing my thermal undershirt today, the first time I've worn it since I bought it at D. Ray James (the private prison in Georgia) in December. I put it on a few times when I was there, but we also had a coat for cold December-January days too; here in Yazoo City they haven't given that out yet.

Nonetheless, I was comfortable reading outside my excellent biography of Allen Ginsberg by Michael Schumacher, called "Dharma Lion". I'm at the part, page 250, where Ginsberg's magnum opus poem "Howl" has been seized by San Francisco police, and the publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti and his City Lights Bookshop are being charged with obscenity and distribution of lewd materials. This trial is one of the big upheavals in San Francisco and American legal history, and "Howl" is vindicated.

While "Howl" is seized, and Ferlinghetti and a City Lights book store clerk are jailed and bailed out by the ACLU, Ginsberg's edit of William Burrough's "Naked Lunch" is being completed, with the portend that "Naked Lunch" too will encounter similar controversies shortly afterward. I have read "Howl" many years ago but now I will comprehend it much more, understanding what the 'Beat generation' means and what was going on with Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs that underlined how their work came about, and its significance. The first stanza of "Howl" may be one of the most famous opening lines in all of American poetry:

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection
to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night"

In that opening you can see into the soul of Charlie Parker, Jim Morrison, Abbie Hoffman, Phil Ochs, and so many other casualties of the brutalities of our age. Fortunately, some of those brutalized did not go mad, and survived intact enough to leave us powerful legacies as a warning about the fragility of our liberties and our sanity.

I have always admired how Allen Ginsberg was present at so many influential moments in history: the founding of the Beat generation literary and poetry movements; the early, more risky protests of the Vietnam War; the King of May event in Prague in 1965; the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park in San Fran in January 1967; the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago; and so many other moments in history that captured the zeitgeist of the times.

Allen Ginsberg led the very earliest marijuana protests in the 1950's and early 60's, plus he brought it up in Cuba, Czechoslovakia, and anywhere he traveled where cannabis users were oppressed and imprisoned. He had such a revelatory and liberating experience at a poetry convention at the University of British Columbia in October 1963, involving sex orgies and marijuana; this in turn influenced his Human BE-IN's that happened in San Francisco in January 1967 and in Vancouver in March of 1967. Ginsberg picketed numerous jails and detention centers in New York and San Francisco where marijuana users were held in the 1950's and 60's. He brought marijuana legalization up wherever he went in the world. In India its use was everywhere, so he really liked India. Ginsberg's life story is fascinating for the cannabis culture. Ginsberg used marijuana from 1947 to his death in 1997 and was perhaps one of its most articulate defenders in the 1950's, 60's and 70's.

I am enjoying the research, structure and thoroughness of Michael Schumacher's biographies. I have his biography of Eric Clapton here to read afterward, but weeks ago I finished Schumacher's excellent biography of 60's folksinger Phil Ochs, called "There but For Fortune".

I will say that my time in prison has given me the opportunity to immerse myself in the life and works of some of my heroes, such as Martin Luther King Jr. (the outstanding three-volume work by Taylor Branch that took me months to complete at Sea-Tac FDC in Seattle last year), Malcolm X, Bob Marley, Ayn Rand, Clarence Darrow, Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and now Allen Ginsberg.

I am busy all the time, reading six or seven magazines each week and the daily NY Times, writing letters, doing three hours of Corrlinks ("email") daily, practicing and playing bass guitar, working through a backlog of books (and more on the way), and making the best use of my time. I have been in good health for two months now, and I eat as best as can be possible here, and drink only water. I take calcium and Vitamin C and D supplements daily. My morale stays elevated just anticipating and cherishing your visits to me.

I look forward to receiving photographs of all the changes at your store and the hallways leading to the BCMP Lounge. I hear it looks very handsome! So glad to hear change and improvement is going on. I know you are incredibly busy and wish I were home to rub your feet after your long gruelling days of activity. I promise there will be a long, delicious foot rub every night once I am returned to you!

The National Geographic Special "Marijuana Nation" with me in it aired last Saturday, and days before that, the worldwide version of that episode, titled "Inside Marijuana" with even more of me in it (and less DEA coverage, which was more prominent in the US version), aired in numerous countries around the globe, so I am pleased to know the message about my work continues to be on television. The new documentary CITIZEN MARC is in the final stages of editing and should be ready to be submitted to film festivals by next Spring and Summer.

My graduation photo of me in cap and gown came back today, so I will mail that to you immediately so you can make it my Facebook profile photo. As of today, Tuesday, September 27th, I have 1,016 days to my release – that's 33 months to go. Unless we get that pardon! Something to work towards!

I love my Mrs. Emery!
Your Husband & Admirer,
Marc
xox

Write Marc a letter:

MARC EMERY #40252-086
FCI YAZOO CITY – MEDIUM E-1
P.O. BOX 5888
YAZOO CITY, MS
39194

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