Pubdate: Mon, 05 Sep 2005 Source: Western Standard (Canada) Copyright: 2005 Western Standard Contact: http://www.westernstandard.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3448 Author: Andrea Mrozek Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada) QUESTION PERIOD - MARC EMERY You now face extradition to the U.S. for selling marijuana seeds over the Internet to Americans. How did you get away with these activities until now? Born: February 13, 1958, London, Ont. Marijuana legalization activist. Vancouver-based marijuana seed retailer. Former bookstore owner. Western Standard: How successful has your marijuana activism been to date? Marc Emery: I've been involved in political campaigns, and begging and pleading with people to give you money doesn't work. You need a self-sustaining capitalist engine to generate money to finance a revolution. Pot people typically were socialist, left-wing types who eschewed capitalism, and I said this is a very big mistake. I said we all have to learn to become business people and we have to use this money to get our word out. In 1994, 26 per cent of Canadians believed that marijuana should be tax-regulated and legalized and now, in 2005, it's over 55 per cent that believe that. So the change in the Canadian public's mind has been substantial. Over the last 10 years I have given about $4.5 million to over 300 organizations in North America, Canada and even Europe, and gotten hundreds of people out of jail and put up bail and paid for the lawyers. We paid for the [2003] Canadian Supreme Court hearing to legalize marijuana, which was lost six votes to three. When [Vancouver] Mayor Larry Campbell came out and advocated legalizing marijuana, he did so at a conference I paid for last year, called Beyond Prohibition, which cost me $20,000. I gave $25,000 to further the Nevada ballot initiative in 2000 to make marijuana legal, and $5,000 to the Alaska initiative in the year 2002 to make marijuana legal. I sponsored a drug addiction clinic that cost me $250,000 from the years 2002 to 2004, where we treated hard-core heroine and cocaine addicts. WS: Why have you been so public about your illegal activities? ME: Transparency is the key to getting public support. If the public does not see what you are doing, they suspect that you are hiding all this money, you are living the high life. I was the exact opposite. I've given $380,000 in personal income taxes to both the federal government and the B.C. government in the last five years. It was clearly told to them that this was from the sale of marijuana seeds. They never ever said, "Gee, I don't know if we can take this." They said, "Thank you Marc." Everything I have ever taken, I have given to the government their share. I regard them as very complicit. They knew all along what I was doing. I've never had criticisms or admonitions from the local police, the provincial government, the federal government. WS: On July 29, you were arrested in Canada, at the behest of the U.S. Department of Justice. You now face extradition to the U.S. for selling marijuana seeds over the Internet to Americans. How did you get away with these activities until now? ME: By being transparent. There was no harm going on. No one ever criticized it. They could see what we were doing. I was treating hard-core drug addicts. I was paying huge volumes in taxes. I was being very open about what I was doing. I said I want to see the end of the drug war. I'm using all my money to catalyze social change to this end through a capitalist model. Transparency gets very much appreciated by the public. They saw no harm in what was being done. A huge minority of the country smokes marijuana and many of the elite members of our society have smoked marijuana. WS: How would you ensure the movement continues in Canada if you go to jail in the U.S.? ME: They'll have somebody to rally around, they'll have a kind of icon, like Mahatma Gandhi provided the Indians, like Mandela provided the South Africans. Like Martin Luther King appealed to blacks. If I get martyred, then that will ultimately serve our purposes all around the world against the U.S. government. And this will make change happen faster. The American empire is on the precipice of its decline. And the war in Iraq is going to contribute greatly to the destabilization of the United States in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of its own people. I've always advocated peaceful democratic change. And every dime I've ever spent was for change. And this is unusual in an era where people use bombs and threats and invasions and armies and interrogation and intimidation and imprisonment as a way of social change and social control. What I've always advocated is what every good Canadian should advocate: some kind of democratic hope, some kind of way for people to achieve their human rights and their human dignity without using violence, but by using money I earned as an example to persuade others of the folly of the drug war.