Marc Emery arrested in extradition bid (Merged & updated 3/20/06)

Re: Re: USA not OK ...tread elsewhere!

frizzantik said:
The dude was shipping seeds to the US.. chances are the bulk of his business was US based. It's not like the US wants him extradited for crimes he has committed in Canada, he's wanted for crimes he has committed inside the US. If you don't want to be arrested by the US gov't don't commit crimes here ;)
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Absolutely correct ...I bielieve He will end up in our system... also because I heard like 80% of the buisness was Americans ....This is a tough subject....Many Mexicans And Cubans Have been extradited for many of years and they were catchin 10-20yrs For Being a supplier to america even more than 20 yrs in some cases..

I like Mark Emery but when your as flagrent as he is about Selling Parephanalia.Weed,And Seeds...Your Gonna Piss Someone Off....from what I read He Shipped seeds to DEA agents Numerouse Times(Thats Enough For prosecution)in America..Another Fact is that there are Hundreds if not thousands Of other comapanies or private individuals selling seeds and there not catching heat.. Why?...Cause there keeping low And Not trippin the americans radar buy protesting..

If he doesnt end up in our system Canada saved his ass.
 
Emery lawyer blasts Ottawa over charges

The London free Press
Fri, January 6, 2006

VANCOUVER -- A lawyer for pot activist Marc Emery says the federal government's decision not to proceed with drug charges against his client clears the way for his possible extradition to the United States and means the federal government is kowtowing to the Americans.

Kirk Tousaw was commenting on the stay of three conspiracy charges filed against Emery by a private citizen to thwart U.S. efforts to extradite the former Londoner to that country for distributing marijuana seeds to Americans by mail.

David McCann filed the charges last September, saying it would be hypocritical of Canada to participate in U.S. officials' efforts to prosecute Emery for activities condoned here for years.

Tousaw said the extradition wouldn't have gone ahead if Emery, along with his co-accused, Michelle Rainey-Fenkarek and Greg Keith Williams, were prosecuted in Canada.

"I'm concerned when our government acts as an arm of the U.S. drug war and has an opportunity to reassert Canadian sovereignty but refused to do so," Tousaw said. "I think all Canadians should be concerned about that."

McCann said he doesn't understand why the federal government would participate in an extradition request by the United States when it largely ignored Emery's activities and Health Canada even referred people needing medicinal marijuana to him.

Emery and his associates were arrested last July after police raided Emery's pot paraphernalia store after an 18-month investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Emery, dubbed the Prince of Pot by the media, is set to return to B.C. Supreme Court next month to set a date for an extradition hearing.

A judge can only recommend whether someone should be extradited. The final decision rests with the federal justice minister.

Emery, originally from London, said he only met McCann recently and thanked him for his efforts to allow Canadian jurors to hear the evidence against him. "I thought that what happened would happen," he said of the charges being stayed. "But I'm still a little crestfallen."

A Crown prosecutor was not available to say why the government stayed the drug charges.

Tousaw said Justice Minister Irwin Cotler had the opportunity to block the extradition by allowing the private prosecution to go forward. "Doing so would have made extradition impossible. I suppose it would be reasonable to assume that there was pressure brought to bear on the justice minister not to do anything other than stay the prosecution."

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StagnantReaction said:
Isn't shipping hemp seeds into the US legal? They contain like 40ug (like 0.01% ) THC or something.
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[sigh] Nope. Even the seeds are illegal here.

:(
 
Prince of Pot Emery on 60 Minutes Sunday

The London Free Press
Fri, March 3, 2006
By CAMILLE BAINS, CP

VANCOUVER -- Pot crusader Marc Emery says his appearance on the news program 60 Minutes on Sunday will be an opportunity for Americans to see him as just an ordinary guy who regards himself as the Luke Skywalker fighting their government's Darth Vader tactics.

Most people would be amused that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is trying to extradite him to face drug charges, former Londoner Emery said. Americans weren't forced to buy his marijuana seeds, he said.

"I think Americans are going to say that if this is the No. 1 drug trafficking kingpin, then I want to move to Canada," said the so-called Prince of Pot, adding he's fighting an evil empire similar to the one in the movie Star Wars.

"I enjoy that comic-book premise of my actions, that it's this little tiny person trying to bring justice and dignity to a whole culture in the face of a big, monolithic, Nazified institution like the DEA."

Bob Simon, the reporter who interviewed Emery in Vancouver for the 60 Minutes piece, said the program decided to air the segment on Emery because his case shows the enormous cultural divide between Canada and the United States when it comes to smoking pot.

"Vancouver has a very permissive culture as far as the smoking of marijuana is concerned," Simon said from New York.

"You do not walk down the street in most American cities smoking a joint, whereas in Vancouver, you can do it and you will not be punished for it," he said.

"We're not talking about the difference between the United States and Laos. We're talking about the United States and Canada, our proverbial friendly neighbours to the north.

Simon said Emery has been punished only lightly in Canada, yet if he's extradited to the U.S., "He's going to face really hard time."

Emery, 48, will be facing an extradition hearing later this year.

Besides being accused of selling pot seeds to Americans through the mail, the longtime pot activist is charged with conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and conspiracy to engage in money laundering.

Emery was arrested last July after police raided Emery's pot paraphernalia store following an 18-month investigation by the DEA. Emery said he sold $15 million in marijuana seeds around the world between 1994 and 2005. He has been arrested 21 times in Canada.

Link
 
DEA tries to extradite Canadian "Pot Prince"

VANCOUVER - Sweet marijuana smoke tumbles down the steps from "the Vapor Lounge," a corner of Marc Emery's bookstore where customers toke up at will.

"We get high with everybody," Emery says, shrugging. "This is a pilgrimage spot, and people come here from all over the world. We get high."

Illegal? Yes.


So were the seeds he used to keep in a case in the store, with exotic names like Afghan Dream and Chemo Grizzly. So was the booming business he ran, complete with glossy seed catalogues describing the subtle and sublime nuances of his varieties. ("Nebula: Fruity flavor and scent. Transcendental buzz. Harvest outdoor.") So, for that matter, are the other marijuana businesses that have sprouted up in the block around his Vancouver bookstore. The street is nicknamed "Vansterdam," with pot-hazy cafes, headshops filled with pipes and bongs, and neon signs advertising illegal seed sales.

Until recently, nobody much cared, it seemed. The police hadn't bothered to come around for eight years. Before that, they busted Emery for seed sales and raided him four times. But he just got fined -- once with "a nice speech from the judge saying what a nice person I was and how marijuana probably shouldn't be illegal," Emery says -- and the police stopped trying.

'Marijuana Seed Vendor'
In truth, Emery hated being ignored. He tried to stir up notoriety. Every year, he filled out his income taxes listing his occupation as "Marijuana Seed Vendor," paying heftily and honestly, he says, on his multimillion-dollar business. The Canadian Revenue Service never questioned him.

He told the Canada post office he was getting and sending his seeds through the mail. They never stopped delivery. He started the B.C. Marijuana Party, fielded 79 candidates in 2001, and ran repeatedly for local and federal offices. He never won.

He broadcast "Pot-TV" on the Internet, entertained politicians, and openly funded marches, lawsuits and marijuana-legalization drives from Arizona to Israel to Washington, D.C.

When it was too quiet at home, he would go somewhere to rattle up a pro-pot demonstration. He would light up a fat joint in front of a police station, daring the cops to arrest him.

Twenty-one times they did. Usually he got off, or was released after a night in jail, or fined. His longest stretch was 61 days in jail in 2004, ordered by a Saskatoon judge clearly irked at Emery's in-your-face apologia. No big deal, Emery says. He read the Bible behind bars.

Then came the DEA.

Emery figured something was up when a strange young woman pestered him to buy 10 pounds of pot. He refused. She bought some seeds at his store, asked for tips about how to hide them to go to the States, and left.

Eight days later, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and Vancouver police tromped into his store, ordered the customers out, taped paper over the windows and began hauling out computers and files. Emery, on the other side of Canada to speak near Halifax at the Atlantic Hemp Festival, was grabbed by six plainclothes policemen as he left a restaurant.

Emery is "one of the attorney general's most wanted international drug trafficking targets," the DEA in Washington crowed on July 29, 2005, announcing an extradition request for Emery and two employees. Emery's bust, the DEA said, was "a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade but also to the marijuana legalization movement."

And he thought trying to change the law was legal, Emery muses.

'They need to leave our country alone'
So did lots of other Canadians, it turned out. Emery's arrest for extradition on U.S. "drug kingpin" charges, carrying a minimum sentence of 10 years to life in prison, outraged many in Canada. They resented the long reach of America's law and what they saw as the United States' fevered preoccupation with pot.

"They need to leave our country alone," complained a letter to the editor in the London (Ontario) Free Press. "If we wanted to prosecute Emery we would, but it is not worth our time and money."

"Marc's business was known to police and every level of government," intoned a columnist in the Vancouver Province. To arrest him now "is petty and dishonest."

Todd Greenberg, the assistant U.S. attorney handling the case in Seattle, says Canada's apparent tolerance of Emery's seed business does not make the U.S. bid to prosecute him unfair.

"What Canada does or does not do is not particularly relevant to us," he says. "We are prosecuting him for what he did in our country -- distributing millions and millions of marijuana seeds in the United States. When someone does that, the United States has the obligation to enforce our laws whether that person is physically located here or overseas."

Greenberg says the charges brought by a federal grand jury followed an 18-month investigation in which DEA agents repeatedly found Marc Emery's seeds at the root of illegal marijuana "grow ops." He insists Emery's legalization campaigns did not affect the charges.


That sounds hollow to Bruce Mirken, a spokesman for the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project that Emery says he helped finance (contributors are confidential, the organization says). The DEA's public boast to have dealt a blow to "the legalization movement" showed its hand, Mirken says.

"This is a democracy. We are supposed to be able to talk about whether our laws make any sense.

"Year after year they roll out ad campaigns that attempt to demonize marijuana," Mirken notes. "They consider it the number one drug threat in America. That always struck us as bizarre."

If the DEA tries to demonize marijuana, Emery runs a multimedia juggernaut to sanctify it. In addition to his irreverent Internet site, his Cannabis Culture magazine comes out every other month, a slick magazine chockablock with advertisements by seed vendors and hydroponics suppliers, articles on growing lush and potent plants, and even a "pot puzzler" crossword. He says he distributes 75,000 copies.

Emery's bookstore is a cheerful dispensary for books and magazines on marijuana, bongs and pipes of every conceivable design, T-shirts, pot cookbooks, grinders, vaporizers, mushroom spores, and hemp clothing.

And then there is Emery himself. At 48, he looks more like a Young Republican than a stoner who calls himself the Prince of Pot. As often as not, he is in a coat and tie, with neatly combed hair, an earnest expression, with a good sound bite for the TV. He has been a soccer coach and a foster parent. Married, divorced and soon to remarry -- to Jodie Giesz-Ramsay, 21, who transcribed his jailhouse musings and now helps edit his magazine.

He talks with a machine-gun style unmellowed by his admitted custom of a daily joint or two. He compares himself to Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. He had to apologize last year for calling a federal minister a "Nazi," and he won no PR points when he spat on a policeman during a 2000 arrest of one of his employees.

Emery's life is the limelight. For 17 years, he ran a used-book store in Ontario, and publicly challenged a business fee, his town's bid for the 1991 Pan American Games, its Sunday shopping laws and pornography laws. In 1990 he flouted the prohibition against selling High Times magazine, then banned as "illicit drug literature." He helped win that battle, getting the law overturned, and found his calling in the marijuana movement.

He wound up in British Columbia, a tolerant corner of a tolerant country. The official statistics agency of Canada says 45 percent of Canadians over age 15 have used marijuana. Possession and use is legal for medical purposes, and the former Liberal government tried to make possession of pot a matter of a small fine.

The legislation did not pass, but the laws on marijuana and sales of seeds are often overlooked. Until his arrest in July, Emery says only two people had ever been prosecuted for selling seeds, and both had simply been fined.

So Emery sold and sold. He accepted seed orders of the 534 varieties listed in his catalogue or on the Internet only with money orders that could not be easily traced. He got and sent seeds through the Canadian Postal Service, and then destroyed the records, he says.

"I sold millions of seeds proudly to people all over the world," and perhaps 70 percent of them were mailed to the United States, he concedes. "Everything the DEA said is correct -- except I don't buy the charge that I'm poisoning children of America."

Emery says he did it all for the movement, not for profit.He claims to have funneled more than $3 million to marches, candidates, lawsuits and ballot drives over a decade. He says he paid taxes and kept very little. He lives modestly in his fiancee's apartment. He doesn't own a car or a house, investments or fancy jewelry, he says.

Emery will get a judicial hearing in Canada later this year. The Canadian justice minister in the new conservative government could block the extradition, but he is a tough-talking former prosecutor and Emery acknowledges his chances are "slim odds indeed."

"In the U.S, I have every confidence I would get a minimum of 30 years," Emery says in an interview in the basement of his bookstore. "I'll get a longer sentence than I'd get in Canada for multiple murder, for something no one in Canada has ever gone to jail for."

Here is the twist: Emery welcomes it. Almost.

"I'm interested in whatever would legalize pot fastest," he says. "Part of me believes that going to jail will accelerate that process. And part of me believes that if I die in jail it will accelerate it even faster."

That is as much for Emery's devotion to the spotlight as devotion to the cause, he concedes.

"I'm very interested to see what happens to me, because I think I am a person of destiny," he says, with no trace of modesty. "I haven't been fearful since the moment I was arrested. I just felt my time has finally come. . . .

"I've already got this grand-scale epic going in my head. I am out to destroy the DEA and defeat them. And they are out to destroy me."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11865883/

What really impresses me is that this was on the homepage of MSN. It's great seeing our cause get real coverage in a positive light.
 
"I'm very interested to see what happens to me, because I think I am a person of destiny," he says, with no trace of modesty.


gawd could this guy be more full of himself? sorry buddy but i doubt you going to jail for slanging seeds is gonna get pot legalized any faster
 
there was a huge thing on TV about this guy. he's made like 15$ million selling seeds and the DEA considers him like the biggest drug deal everrrrrrrr lol

idk why the USA is wasting time w him. I guess that if u stop the big fish all the little fish go down too but this guy is nothing big. seeds are natural and someone else will just take his place.
 
Jesus christ... I guess it just goes to show that the DEA is pretty bored these days here in the States. What's left but to go to another country to make arrests?

Aren't there some meth labs they should be busting instead? 8)
 
If i was this Emery dude i would be giving money to republican politicans based in the US.

Then when I was arrested I would send a media package to the DEA and a number of politicans showing the receipts for funding with possible headlines:

"Bush funded by Canadian Pot Prince"

"Republicans bought off by drug prince"

Within seconds the court action would be dropped and the DEA would have to go back to actually arresting/investigating US allies that are complict in the real drug trade (i.e. Afghanstan and the like).
 
I think this guy is a complete fool, I mean he is obviously living in his own little fantasy land!

You can't sell seeds illegaly all over the world and act all suprised when someone kicks your door in. Especially when the door is a bloody cannabis shop haha.

He wanted to be in the lime light and do illegal things at the same time, I say he is lucky he wasnt caught sooner.
 
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Dont forget the picture of him and his 15 gram joint!
 
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