Marc Emery details plans to end marijuana prohibition with Justin Trudeau and the Liberals

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      Marc Emery’s top picks for Canadian politicians go to the Greens and NDP. But he doesn’t want you to vote for either of those parties in next year’s federal election.

      “Elizabeth May and Libby Davies are two of my favourite MPs,” Emery told the Straight. “But there is a time when you have to make decisions about what’s really important, and stopping Stephen Harper and replacing his government is the ultimate priority.”

      Emery was speaking from Yazoo City Prison in Mississippi, where he’s serving the final month of a five-year sentence for selling cannabis seeds. In a wide-ranging telephone interview, the so-called Prince of Pot said a voter drive will be at the centre of a cross-country tour he’s planned for the fall of 2015.

      “We’ll be trying to get young people out,” Emery continued. “It’s really important to motivate them to go out and vote for the Liberal party, because they could also split the vote between the Greens and the NDP, and I really don’t want to see that happen.”

      Emery’s relatively-newfound support for the Liberals is firmly rooted in his life’s work aimed at ending the prohibition of marijuana. In November 2012, Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau revealed that he was a “huge supporter of decriminalization”, and that he wanted Canada to take a serious look at legalizing and regulating the drug.

      Emery described Trudeau’s position as “courageous and unprecedented”.

      “Normally, they all wait until they’ve retired out of politics before they advocate the legalization route,” he explained. “Justin Trudeau is the only leader of a Canadian political party with any chance of forming the government who’s ever done this. I thought it was pretty brave of him.”

      Criticizing a system of prohibition

      Emery didn’t have such kind words for every politician who’s made an about-face on marijuana.

      In May 2014, two former high-profile B.C. politicians announced they were going to work in Canada’s booming medicinal marijuana industry. First, the province’s former top cop, Kash Heed, signed on as a security consultant for medical growers. A couple of weeks later, ex-premier Mike Harcourt took a position as chairperson of True Leaf Medicine Inc.

      Emery said he holds a “moral objection” against individuals who once helped imprison people for petty drug offences now profiting off the sale of marijuana.

      “While they were in charge of administrations, they busted hundreds, if not thousands of people,” he said. “They’ve never apologized for what they did….And now here our oppressors are actually taking financial advantage.”

      According to Emery, the larger issue is the legitimization of the Conservative government’s Marihuana Medical Access Regulations (MMAR), and how those rules are being used to maintain a system of prohibition.

      As of April 1, 2014, medicinal marijuana licence holders previously allowed to grow their own medicine were only permitted to purchase dried cannabis via mail order from large-scale producers. (The implementation of certain MMAR provisions has since been delayed by a court challenge and interim injunction.)

      Emery argued this new system extends “extraordinary privilege” to a small group of corporations while “disenfranchising and marginalizing” people who grow small amounts of marijuana for private consumption.

      “This whole medicinal marijuana business just reeks of hypocrisy,” Emery concluded. “Either we’re free and autonomous individuals who can put in our bodies what we want, or we’re not. This idea that there are somehow citizens with superior rights to others is ridiculous and unacceptable.”

      Emery also described the MMAR as a form of cooptation. He predicted that companies with licences to grow medicinal marijuana could soon act as a “bulwark against legalization”.

      “They’re not going to want to give up their special privilege,” Emery explained. “I fear that’s what the Conservatives have deliberately created.”

      A cross-country tour in 2015

      Emery is scheduled for release on July 10. On that day, prison officials will turn him over to U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ahead of his pending return to Canada. It’s unknown how long he’ll be in the custody of ICE. Emery said it could take days, weeks, or more than a month, depending on the pace at which a bureaucracy processes his case.

      His return to Canada will therefore likely happen in the late summer, at the border crossing at Windsor, Ontario. From there, he’ll travel to London for a few days with family. Next up are public parties planned for Toronto and then Vancouver. Emery said he’ll then be leaving Canada for an international speaking tour and vacation with his wife, Jodie.

      The couple’s itinerary includes Spain, France, Ireland, and Austria, after which they will return to Vancouver. A second trip abroad planned for 2015 is expected to take them to Jamaica, Uruguay, Argentina, and South Africa.

      By that time, Canada will be preparing for the 2015 federal election, which Emery said will see him and Jodie make a 30-stop cross-country tour beginning in early September.

      Asked if he was at all concerned the marijuana issue could backfire and become a liability for the federal Liberals, Emery argued that Trudeau has taken a position that has growing support from the public.

      “For the first time in 40 years, the majority of Canadians are highly sympathetic to my point of view,” he said.

      Emery claimed he has no plans to run for office, but stated he expects politics to still consume the majority of his time once he’s free.

      “Getting rid of Stephen Harper and making sure Justin Trudeau is elected along with the Liberal party is a pretty major job,” Emery said. "Really, the only job that I’m going to have in the next year.”

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      Comments

      18 Comments

      Meathead

      Jun 16, 2014 at 8:14pm

      While I don't have a lot of sympathy for Marc at the best of times, I am thoroughly disgusted by the contemptuous attitude he was shown by the Conservative Government and the Minister of Justice. I will give him kudos for taking the entire rap and sparing his friends from spending time in an American prison. But I see no reason why his request (which was approved by the US) to spend his sentence in a Canadian institution was outright ignored by the Minister. Apparently we all are not equal under the law and this was an egregious breach of morals and the charter rights of Canadian citizens everywhere. I just hope Marc and the gang stick it to the Government... and more specifically, that bastard Vic Towes.

      Marc Emery details plans to end marijuana prohibition with Justin Trudeau

      Jun 16, 2014 at 10:54pm

      You would have to be stoned to vote for Trudeau . A vote for the lying libs is a vote for HarperCon . Libs = Cons remember that , all there ideas are pro corporation business as usual , remember Martin / Chretien same as Mackay / Harper , Christy Clark is a liberal and most of the idiots are lib or Con .
      Smoke bud but don't vote not bad dud aka Libs / Cons , don't split the vote , vote NDP !!!

      Mike Jones

      Jun 17, 2014 at 4:24am

      Emery and Bozo Eruption will make a fine couple. Good luck with your clown tour.

      AKD

      Jun 17, 2014 at 6:17am

      Emery should be prepared for Harper to call a Spring election. After all, even though Harper made sure to give us set election dates he enjoys breaking the laws even if they are ones he created. He likes to be in control so don't expect the set election date to be observed.

      AKD

      Jun 17, 2014 at 6:27am

      While I agree that marijuana needs to be legalized along with all street drugs, I think the environment is the most important election issue we have and the only party that has that priority in place is the Green party. I also do not think they are opposed to legalizing marijuana.

      Anonymous

      Jun 17, 2014 at 8:09am

      Well good luck with your one issue to unseat Harper. Most people have real issues to contend with like joblessness and the phoney austerity we are forced to live with.

      Russell Barth

      Jun 17, 2014 at 8:12am

      If Marc Emery thinks Justin Trudeau is ACTUALLY going to legalize pot, then I wonder about his sanity.
      It is a ploy. Justin will never legalize. He will try to Tobacco-ize pot. A "legal" and overly-taxed commercial market, competing with an illegal market, just like we have now with tobacco.
      Meanwhile, the cops will be granted even MORE powers of coercion and intrusion.

      And if Emery thinks this is acceptable, well, he will have a lot of people fighting him.
      Pot is safer than chocolate, sugar, coffee, or tomatoes. The laws should reflect that.

      Legal as cabbage. Sold in supermarkets.

      Nothing less will suffice.

      If I have to answer to some lunkhead COP about pot, it isn't legal.

      WHO is bustable under the Trudeau idea of Legal?

      If the answer is anything other than "no body", then it isn't legal.

      MD

      Jun 17, 2014 at 8:21am

      ....except that I have no doubts the Golden Boy will walk back from legalization once ensconced in 24 Sussex, and we will end up with some form of ticket-based decriminalization, with small fines for possession

      I am over forty, and have yet to see a federal Liberal govern on the progressive side of the ledger as enthusiastically as they campaign on it.

      I hope I am wrong, but I fear Mr.Emery is going to get played on this.

      Look at Justin's inner circle of advisers and you can see the old Liberal guard raising its head once again.

      They only govern progressively when the courts make them, or they think it might cost them an election

      Ron

      Jun 17, 2014 at 9:16am

      Vote Liberal and Trudeau who is Harper-lite. Trudeau supports the Kinder-Morgan pipeline, the sale of Nexen oil to the Chinese state oil corporation, and the massive cuts of the corporate tax rate to 15% - just like Harper!

      T.W

      Jun 17, 2014 at 10:09am

      As a firm believer in decriminalization, what happened to Marc Emery was an unconscionable miscarriage of justice, an unforgivable surrender of a Canadian citizen to a foreign country and typical of the close minded, black and white world Harper and his seals that will take years to undo in this country.
      They sold him down the river based only on ideology and blind faith that the war on drugs is winnable when it is clearly not.
      So I fully support Emery and his push to toss the Conservatives out of power and restore sanity to the drug laws, but there’s one caveat.
      Marc, when you’re released you need to temper the dope smoking, before you went to prison you had the permanent stoned look in your eyes and features and that won’t help the cause.
      There’s a time and a place and everything in moderation right, you risk not being taken seriously if you partake too often, and let’s face it, you do.
      The war on drugs is a dismal failure and the biggest BS story since religion, it must be stopped, but that doesn’t mean you need to be baked 24/7 either.