'Prince of Pot' eager to take up legalization fight after release from U.S. prison
BY ISHMAEL N. DARO, CANADA.COM JUNE 23, 2014
Marc Emery smoking a joint among marijuana plants. The self-styled "Prince of Pot" is returning to Canada this summer following a five-year prison sentence in the U.S. for selling seeds.
Photograph by: supplied , Canada.com
Marc Emery wakes up having only gotten a few good hours of sleep.
He used to sleep in until much later, but here in the the medium-security prison, they expect your bed made “military style” by 8 a.m. He shares the seven-by-12-foot cell with another inmate, and he considers himself lucky for that. Half the inmates are crammed into three-person cells. He’s already missed breakfast, usually nothing more than oatmeal and an apple or banana. They used to serve grapefruit and oranges with breakfast but too many inmates were making their own illicit alcohol, so now there’s no more citrus fruits.
The rest of his day is predictable. Work for several hours, reading, maybe some TV and lockup by 9:40. The lights go off at 10 p.m., after which he continues reading with a nightlight for a while before falling into an uneasy sleep.
This has been Emery’s routine for much of the last five years, a boring existence for a brash pot activist who was never far from the spotlight or from controversy while still a free man. A man who built a small media empire to promote his cause, relished smoking enormous joints in public and fiercely denounced those who crossed him, once even calling a Liberal justice minister “a Nazi Jew.” (He later apologized.)
Emery is counting down the days before he gets out, and sometime in late August the self-styled Prince of Pot will be back in Canada to smoke his first joint since 2010.
For now Emery is still a guest of the U.S. justice system, biding his time in a federal prison in Yazoo City, Mississippi where he has spent most of his five-year sentence after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana as a result of his seed-selling business in Vancouver. His last official day in custody is July 9, although his deportation back to Canada will take several more weeks after that.
“I find it amazing to believe this is my fifth year in prison on this conviction for selling seeds in the mail to Americans!” Emery writes from Yazoo, where email privileges cost $3 per minute. “I can’t believe I’ve nearly made it!”
A lot has changed in the debate over marijuana prohibition in the intervening years. A half-dozen more U.S. states now allow for medical marijuana, and Colorado and Washington legalized recreational use in 2012.
In Canada, federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has said he favours legalization and, according to some polls, appears likely to form government in 2015, bringing Emery’s lifelong dream within reach.
Now 56, Emery calls the next federal election “pivotal” and has already vowed to travel the country in support of the Liberals with his wife Jodie, herself a prominent activist against marijuana prohibition and potential Liberal candidate.
“Our job is going to be explaining to the general public how marijuana legalization is not just about pot,” she says in a phone call from Vancouver. “It’s about saving billions of dollars and protecting young people.”
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