"I am best for the spotlight," pot activist Marc Emery tells Globe Life's Sarah Hampson in today's Globe and Mail.
"When you look at who should be representing our culture, I just can't see anybody who's been better at it than I have been," he says.
"But listen to him for an hour and you begin to wonder if Mr. Emery, who is a hero in Vancouver - or rather, Vansterdam, the centre of Canada's tolerated cannabis culture - is, indeed, the best representative," writes Ms. Hampson.
"He has been enormously successful at drawing attention to the issue of marijuana decriminalization, but the Prince of Pot treads perilously close to being the Dope of Vansterdam."
'When you look at who should be representing our culture, I just can't see anybody who's been better at it than I have been,' Marc Emery says. (Arantxa Cedillo for The Globe and Mail)
Related Articles
Mr. Emery was online earlier to take your questions on everything from why pot should be decriminalized to why he's the right person to make the case for it.
Marijuana activist Marc Emery is the publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine. He started the B.C. Marijuana Party and has run several times for local and federal office
In 2005, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration asked the Canadian government to extradite Mr. Emery and two of his Vancouver employees on charges of drug-trafficking because he exported marijuana seeds to American buyers.
He faces a possible life sentence on charges of selling marijuana seeds and using the profits to fund pro-cannabis legalization activities.
Editor's Note: globeandmail.com editors will read and allow or reject each question/comment. Comments/questions may be edited for length or clarity. We will not publish questions/comments that include personal attacks on participants in these discussions, that make false or unsubstantiated allegations, that purport to quote people or reports where the purported quote or fact cannot be easily verified, or questions/comments that include vulgar language or libellous statements. Preference will be given to readers who submit questions/comments using their full name and home town, rather than a pseudonym.
Rasha Mourtada, Globe Life web editor: Thank you, Mr. Emery, for joining us today. We have lots of questions, so I'll turn right to them.
Unkie Herb, Toronto: Mr. Emery, I am interested in your stance on the issue of legalization vs. decriminalization. I personally feel that by legalizing and regulating marijuana, we can limit the harmful effects of abuse. Alcohol and tobacco are regulated and taxed, generating income for the government and ensuring that products meet certain standards. The marijuana industry pours billions of dollars into organized crime. If growers and retailers were licensed and taxed, that money would instead be applied to social programs - such as education and health care - which can directly reduce the undeniable harmful effects of drugs. Why do you promote decriminalization? Isn't legalization a more balanced policy?
Marc Emery: Decriminalization should mean, according to the word's etymology, no contact with the criminal justice system. At worse, that would be a summons mandating a financial penalty. Decriminalization properly means no contact with any of the following: police, jails, fingerprinting, criminal records.
Decriminalization in Canada has come to mean "alternative penalty regimes", proof that politics has a corrupting influence on language.
A proper regime would be a taxed and regulated approach to distribution. All products and commodities in Canada are regulated and taxed, marijuana should be no different. Greenhouses would be licensed by the provinces, retail stores regulated by City governments, age restrictions enforced, cannabis quantified and certified free of pesticides, etc.
I do take exception that taxation should exceed the regular provincial sales tax and GST, it shouldn't. If a tax punishes a specific group (cannabis users), that to me is an illegal tax rate.
Ed Fung, Mississauga: Does smoking weed have any long term negative effects? I have been smoking weed for 10 years now.
Marc Emery: I would like to say that no discussion of the health impacts of cannabis can be had in its current climate of prohibition. Normally, if someone tells you that French fries are going to kill you, or tobacco (the #2 killer), or alcohol, or sugar (the new #1 killer in Canada), or fast cars, or fatty foods, etc., people don't use those facts to justify putting you in jail.
With cannabis however, every person who uses the so-called health hazards of cannabis as a club to try to jail us.
All the studies on pot health impacts are requested with the specific intent of using those studies to maintain the prohibition, which causes the problems we see, not the use of marijuana. So when our persecutors are trying to jail us and punish by pointing out the health impact on our individual lives, they are doing so with the most devious and cynical motives. Those people don't give a goddamn about our health, its all about judgment and punishment because the free thinking pot smoker is a threat to the conformist mentality that the modern state requires to operate its immoral machinery of prohibition and punishments.
4
