The Strange, Seedy Case of Marc Emery

By Dean Kuipers, LA CityBeat. Posted September 26, 2005.

Looking back, Marc Emery says it was like a scene out of Bonnie and Clyde.

The publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine and Canada's leading marijuana rabble-rouser, Emery was sitting in Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia -- the Lawrencetown Restaurant, in fact -- getting himself together to speak at a legalization rally. It was July 29, 2005, and the second annual Atlantic Hemp Fest was already in full swing, with bands and speakers organized by Maritimers United for Medical Marijuana already entertaining a crowd of about 400-500 people.

Suddenly, the lunchtime crowd vanished. The air changed. "Then I notice the waitresses getting jittery, and oddly encouraging me to leave in an unfriendly way that you never find on the East Coast," Emery says.

Not connecting this weirdness to himself — he wasn't breaking any laws -- he paid his tab and walked outside to his car. Which, oddly, he found boxed in; ordinary-looking cars were right on his bumper in front and behind. As he stood there, looking around for whoever needed to move their cars, a large black man got out of another car parked nearby. Ever polite, Emery quipped, "Hello."

"Marc Emery?" said the man, not waiting for an answer, "you are under arrest --" This was a mild shock, even though Emery has intentionally had himself arrested 11 times since 1994 on pot-related charges as a form of protest.

The man Canadians call the "Prince of Pot" knew such arrests to be mostly pro forma exercises in his country, which he'd used to prove that pot was de facto legal there. But nothing prepared him for the remaining clauses of this stranger's brief proclamation. "— for extradition to the United States, on charges of Conspiracy to Manufacture Marijuana, Conspiracy to Distribute Marijuana Seeds, and Conspiracy to Engage in Money Laundering."

This was no exercise. Cars with flashing lights screeched to a halt all around him, and 10 members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police -- the Mounties -- swarmed him in full tactical gear and ski masks over their faces. As he spent the night in a Halifax holding tank, the reality hit him cold turkey: He wasn't under any charges in Canada, and never would be.

Canada's federal Justice Ministry didn't think his crime -- selling marijuana seeds to fund activist causes — was worth prosecuting. But it was the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that had nailed him, and they'd also grabbed two of his comrades at Emery Seeds in Vancouver — Michelle Rainey-Fenkarek, 34, and Greg Williams, 50 — on the same charges. All three — now known as the "B.C. 3" - face the same sentences.

The DEA had reached across the border into Canada, exerting heavy pressure on that country's federal law enforcement, and were going to drag them all to a hellish federal prison in the United States. Possibly for life.

The conflicting attitudes regarding pot could not be framed in more stark terms: Canada, no charges; U.S., 10 years to life. Canadian response to the arrest has turned the spotlight back on the U.S. federal government's ruthless prosecution of marijuana users and activists. It also mirrors the conflict between the feds and the various states, like California, which have legalized pot for medical use.

The disparity between state laws and federal mandatory minimum sentences are often so huge that activists say they violate the 8th Amendment guarantee against disproportionate punishment. Emery Seeds is one of about 50 seed companies operating in Canada, most of which continue to operate today.

In her bizarre press release of July 29, DEA chief Karen Tandy left little doubt as to why they singled out Emery's operation. "Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group -- is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also the marijuana legalization movement," it begins, adding: "Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on."

Last anyone checked, funding ballot initiatives wasn't illegal in the U.S., and this kind of hubris has threatened to turn Emery's extradition proceedings into a slugfest. Under treaty, the Canadians are bound to turn him over. But the Prince of Pot might prove the exception to the rule.

The Canadian press has erupted in a campaign of vitriol against the U.S. for targeting Emery, who was already a kind of national antihero for opening up the country's outdated censorship laws with Cannabis Culture and his British Columbia Marijuana Party Bookstore. Now he's morphing into a symbol of Canadian sovereignty.

Dean Kuipers is editor of LA CityBeat.