Pubdate: 14 Aug 2001
Source: Business In Vancouver (CN BC)
Copyright: 2003 BIV Publications Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.biv.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2458
Author: David Jordan

DOPE SEEDS SPUR GROWTH

Marc Emery admits profit-spinner is an illegal business

Marc Emery presides over a business empire grossing $3 million in annual 
sales and he doesn't commit a single record to paper.

A good head for figures is one of the requisites of running what he admits 
is an illegal business.

Emery, 43, is the dominant seed supplier to B.C.'s booming industry in 
hydroponic marijuana cultivation. He claims to sell between $2.5 million 
and $3 million worth of seeds a year.

At up to $40 apiece, many of the seeds Emery sells cost considerably more 
than the $10 street price of a gram of marijuana. But these hybrids can 
produce up to a pound of high-grade pot within three to four months.

Emery's sophisticated e-commerce Web site (www.emeryseeds.com) lists 456 
strains of seeds for sale, ranging from Afghan Dream to White Widow.

According to the figures that Emery claims to store in his head, about $1 
million of his annual revenue goes to 10 B.C. growers who supply him with 
seeds. Other expenses include about $200,000 a year for marketing and 
$30,000 annually for postage. After he takes out a personal salary of 
$140,000, the remainder of his annual revenue goes to what Emery refers to 
as "underwriting the movement."

That includes paying legal fees for people charged with marijuana-related 
offenses.

Emery has played a significant role in fuelling B.C.'s booming pot 
cultivation industry, said Erik Poole, a Simon Fraser University graduate 
student in economics specializing in the drug economy.

"He's not only selling seeds, he's also selling technology. So I suppose 
he's been instrumental in the spread of the marijuana 
home-production-growth industry here in B.C.," said Poole.

And that industry is big enough to sway the entire provincial economy.

"The marijuana export business is sufficiently large that it may have 
blunted the last recession that the B.C. economy didn't go into," said Poole.

In contrast to his seed business, Emery keeps meticulous records for his 
legal enterprises, which include the BC Marijuana Party Bookshop on West 
Hastings Street; Cannabis Culture magazine; and Pot TV, a daily Webcast.

The bookshop is self-supporting, but was founded with proceeds of his seed 
business. Pot TV generates no revenue and has cost half a million dollars 
in its first 18 months, said Emery. Cannabis Culture is profitable, Emery 
said, but only thanks to its major advertiser, which happens to be Emery 
himself.

Emery said he files a tax return every year, declaring a personal income of 
$140,000 from seed sales and paying $60,000 in tax.

Emery, a native of London, Ontario, got his brainstorm for supplying the 
B.C. pot industry with seeds when he read a magazine article about B.C.'s 
pot industry while he was travelling in Singapore in 1993.

"I'd never been to B.C. at the time, and I thought, 'Wow, all these people 
with all this pot. If I ever go broke, I'll go back and set up a hemp store 
and start a political party that's self-financing, serving all these people.'"

Emery arrived in Vancouver in 1993 and sold magazines door to door, netting 
about a dollar for each issue of High Times and Grow Your Own Stone that he 
sold. Within five months he had saved $500 for a month's rent on his first 
West Hastings Street store and $3,000 to stock it with hemp products.

He said he grossed $1 million in sales in his first year. However, getting 
busted was part of the cost of doing business. He lost $100,000 when his 
Hemp B.C. store was raided and another $40,000 when a grow shop he opened 
subsequently was raided.

That's when he had his second brainstorm: "I realized as long as I had 
these assets I was a sitting duck, so I got right out of the entire retail 
trade. I got the idea that if I come up with a political party, even if I 
head it, I won't own it, so it can't be seized."

His current bookshop, which carries an inventory of pot-smoking 
paraphernalia in addition to how-to manuals, is a money-raising arm of the 
BC Marijuana Party, which he heads.

The Vancouver Police say it isn't worth their effort to press charges 
against pot growers and instead they focus on simply shutting down those 
grow operations that they find.