Posted on 07/31/2005 12:35:50 PM PDT by freepatriot32
Marc Emery has built a multimillion-dollar business selling marijuana seeds and paraphernalia while thumbing his nose at authorities in his native Canada, even challenging them to arrest him.
Yesterday, the man known as Canada's "Prince of Pot" was arrested in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on a U.S. indictment charging him with selling millions of dollars worth of marijuana seeds to customers throughout the United States.
Emery, the 47-year-old leader of British Columbia's Marijuana Party, has earned about $3 million a year selling the seeds through his Internet Web site and by mail, federal officials said. Emery and two accomplices, Gregory Williams, 50, and Michelle Rainey-Fenkarek, 34, were arrested by Canadian authorities on a warrant issued by federal officials in Washington state.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan said Emery will be tried in the U.S. because he committed most of his alleged crimes in this country. The Seattle-based office of the Drug Enforcement Administration led the investigation.
Sullivan said Emery will be extradited from Canada to the U.S. for trial, but the process could take anywhere from six months to two years.
While Emery owns a Vancouver, B.C., store that sells marijuana paraphernalia and seeds, police say at least 75 percent of his illegal transactions involved U.S. customers.
Vancouver Police Department spokesman Howard Chow said U.S. authorities are hoping to prosecute Emery in Seattle under an agreement called the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, which allows the prosecuting agency to determine where to try defendants. Authorities likely thought there was a better chance of conviction and harsher punishment in the U.S., Chow said.
Emery, a self-styled activist who once called himself a "libertarian capitalist," has become a spokesman for British Columbia's movement to legalize marijuana and is publisher of the Canadian magazine Cannabis Culture.
During a 1996 interview with The Seattle Times, Emery discussed an arrest by Canadian authorities for selling seeds at his Vancouver store. He said he wanted to be arrested to "challenge this stupid law and overturn it."
Neil Boyd, professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., said Emery's arrest may not have occurred if U.S. authorities had not been involved.
"It's not unusual for Canadian police to arrest a person who has committed a serious crime in another country. What's unusual about this case is that they are arresting a person for conduct that attracts very serious penalties in one country and potentially no penalties in Canada," Boyd said.
While selling marijuana seeds in Canada is illegal, Boyd says the laws in Canada are not as tough as in the U.S.
Emery opened his store in 1994 and operates Marc Emery Direct, the Web site through which he sells more than 500 types of marijuana seeds with names such as Wonderberry, White Widow and Island Orange. He claims to own the world's largest selection of marijuana seeds with prices for 10 seeds ranging up to several hundred dollars.
All three defendants were charged with conspiracy to distribute marijuana, conspiracy to distribute marijuana seeds and conspiracy to engage in money laundering. The distribution charges alone carry potential punishments of 10 years to life imprisonment.
John Conroy, Emery's attorney in several previous cases, said Rainey-Fenkarek already had appeared in court and was ordered held on $25,000 bail. He said Emery and Williams may appear in court on Tuesday.
"He's [Emery] been arrested for a number of things over the years," Conroy said, but never before on a U.S. charge. The Canadian arrests include marijuana possession — particularly the seeds — for purposes of trafficking. He has been convicted of some charges, and according to his Web site, he was most recently sentenced to 92 days in jail for trafficking and possession.
Officials say Emery sold marijuana to undercover agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration both by mail and in person.
Emery has been active in pushing for marijuana legalization. He has run for mayor of Vancouver and his marijuana party's slogan is "overgrowing the government."
Because of treaties between the U.S. and Canada, U.S. attorney Sullivan said, if Emery is convicted in the United States he could request to serve his time in Canada, where he might be eligible for release sooner. Sullivan said U.S. authorities will have a chance to weigh in on his release to Canadian custody but that his transfer would still be possible.
"That's one of the frustrations with prisoners who are sent to Canada," Sullivan said.
Ari Bloomekatz: 206-464-2540 or abloomekatz@seattletimes.com
Even you can't believe that.
I didn't hunt them down, but I've seen the stats that show that the %'s of cocaine users now is no less than before cocaine was banned in 190whatever and the numbers of ethanol users didn't increase with the repeal of prohibition, however, the violence associated with the gang warfare over ethanol distribution did end with making it legal, (didn't Al Capone invent drive by shootings), and I know I'm not going to go start smoking pot if it became legal. Are you?
And right now, everbody that wants pot can get it and nobody can stop them. Everyone that wants to smoke pot now is smoking pot now.
There is the gang violence over turf with the drug running. What if we made it a legal product and controlled & taxed the hell out of it like ethanol?
Your analysis is faulty. Even if projections of 50% underage users are correct (and it's unlikely for a number of reasons), you're overlooking the fact that in the case of legalization most of those would be getting their pot from "diverted" legal sources, the same way that underage drinkers today get their booze from Dad's liquor cabinet, or with false IDs or from an "under-the-table" liquor store clerk, or via friends who are of legal age.
What's the last time you saw an underage drinker get bootleg liquor from someone's illegal still? No, they get Budweiser and Jack Daniels from legal producers/distributors -- they just find ways to get around the measures put into place to keep booze out of the hands of minors. That's a lot easier than finding and maintaining a complete black market "alcohol cartel", *and* it's safer, the supply is more reliable, the product is more consistent, and of higher quality. Who in their right might would buy "back alley booze" of unknown safety and quality, when they could get Jose Cuervo Tequila from a friend over 21 who can buy all you want?
The same factors would be at work in the case of marijuana legalization, no matter how large the "youth market".
AND, they'd be much harder to catch, in that it would be perfectly legal for the dealers to own, carry, or grow pot -- you'd have to catch them actually selling to kids.
Not at all. Black market pot would be easy to distinguish from legally produced pot, in the same way that it's not hard to tell bootleg liquor from a case of Absolut Vodka.
Emery will win this case. He's got tons of $$$. He will do it by sucessfully fighting the charge being tried in the US. That end can be done easily. Then in Canadian court he will get a $500 fine which is the usual in Canada.
I guess time will tell...possibly for many years for him.
Marc Emery is one of todays most valiant freedom fighters. I wish that I may someday take the stand he has in defending liberty. I'm not one of his pothead minions...don't use the stuff. The DEA is not on the top of the list of my concerns. I am concerned with the right to keep and bear arms and the BATF is right up ther with the DEA.
This is about freedom..."FREEDOM" Do not ever forget, if we lose this freedom it will be because we let our neighbors lose theirs.
Lurker
As Raisch goes, so goes Stewart.
explain, please.
Lurker
Once the US v Raisch case (medical marijuana) was decided, they didn't even bother to hear US v Stewart (Bob Stewart and Maadi-Griffin) which was next on the docket.
Currently, underage drinkers represent only 10% of all drinkers. Imagine if that were 50%. Do you think that market could be satisfied by "booze from Dad's liquor cabinet, with false IDs, from an "under-the-table" liquor store clerk, or via friends who are of legal age"?
I don't.
"Black market pot would be easy to distinguish from legally produced pot"
Not if adults are allowed to grow their own. And it's very easy to grow very good pot -- you can't say the same for beer, wine, scotch, bourbon, etc.
Liberts everywhere are bummed..
This "cleric" retired here to sponge off our SS system that he never paid into. Came from some Caribbean hole. I am familiar with the case. He never should have been allowed to immigrate here to become an elderly welfare bum.
Nah. Let's tax the hell out of it like tobacco and drive it back underground. Then it'll be legal AND we won't get any revenue.
Yeah, I questioned those statistics at the time -- I didn't think that a comparison of 1900's cocaine addicts to current cocaine users was a fair comparison.
All for personal use, of course. None of our business, fer sure. They'll never enter the commerce stream -- never.
You might have picked a better case with which to challenge the law on second amendment grounds. I thought the federal AWB was a good one.
Then again, the USSC might have ruled that assault weapons, including full-auto, were constitutional (in that they were part of a militia), but handguns were not used by the common militia soldier.
Oops.
Or the limey kingpins behind the whole sordid affair.
I've known Marc for over a decade. He makes lots of money, but spends it freely, particularly on pot-related political activism, because the government has seized his assets before, resulting in him seeing no utility in accumulation and saving.
This is not Marc's first run-in with the Crown - I still have a 'Free Marc' button from a previous episode in Saskatchewan. ;^)
He may not be 'noble', but he puts his money where his mouth is, and refuses to respect wrongful authority. That makes him an outstanding citizen, in my estimation - Canada could use a few more citizens with balls.
All in my ever-so-humble opinion.
Excerpt from the USDOJ website, my comments [bracketed]:
In 1880, many drugs, including opium and cocaine, were legal — and, like some drugs today, seen as benign medicine not requiring a doctor's care and oversight. Addiction skyrocketed. There were over 400,000 opium addicts in the U.S. [50,000,000 census in 1880 =0.8% addiction rate] That is twice as many per capita as there are today.
By 1900, about one American in 200 [=0.5%] was either a cocaine or opium addict. [that is a 37.5% DECLINE. The declne would be even greater if cocaine addicts were not included in the 1900 figure]
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/demand/speakout/06so.htm
______________________________________ Now on to 2000:
"There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999, 50 percent more than the estimated 630,000 hardcore addicts in 1992."
--www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/heroin.htm
"The demand for both powdered and crack cocaine in the United States is high. Among those using cocaine in the United States during 2000, 3.6 million were hardcore users who spent more than $36 billion on the drug in that year."
--http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/cocaine.htm
_______________________________
Using figures from the USDOJ, and a population of 280,000,000, the rate of addiction to either cocaine or heroin in 2000 is about 1.6%, or just over 3X the 0.5% rate in 1900.
What alleged study is that ... what is its title or author(s)?
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