Pubdate: Fri, 27 Apr 2012
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2012 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact: http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/letters.html
Website: http://www.theprovince.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476
Author: Jon Ferry, The Province

PEST OR PROPHET?

Vancouver cannabis crusader Marc Emery, who has both delighted and
appalled Canadians with his strident views on pot prohibition, is
nearly halfway through a five-year jail term in the U.S. for selling
marijuana seeds across the border. And he's increasingly sure he's
winning the drug-legalization campaign he's waged for the past 30
years. Province columnist Jon Ferry is the first journalist to visit
him in U.S. federal prison in Mississippi to ask him why.

YAZOO CITY, Miss. - Marc Emery, pest or prophet? That's the question I
keep asking myself about the headline-hugging Vancouver activist and
his seemingly endless campaign to end marijuana prohibition.

In 2004, when he was in jail in Saskatchewan, I described Emery as a
jerk because of how he had bullied East Vancouver mom Eileen Mosca,
who'd publicly complained about the Da Kine Cafe selling pot a block
away from an elementary school.

Mosca, volunteer president of the Grandview-woodlands community
policing centre, told me she'd been harassed unmercifully after Emery
emailed his supporters to picket her daily with signs calling her a
Nazi.

I accused Emery then of exemplifying that all-too-common Lower
Mainland phenomenon - someone with a cause but no class.

Indeed, I viewed Emery's constant run-ins with the law as something he
brought on himself with his obvious contempt for those who didn't
share his views.

The other day, however, I spent literally hours chatting to Emery at
the U.S. federal prison in this rural Mississippi town, where he's
serving a five-year term for selling marijuana seeds to U.S. growers.

I asked him his views on everything from B.C. politics to U.S. prison
reform. And he was a model of class and courtesy.

He didn't whine or pout, despite what must be a humiliating ordeal,
being locked up in a poor, conservative-minded part of the U.S. that's
about as foreign from affluent, liberal British Columbia as it gets.

Not only did he look as well as I'd ever seen him, but he was also
extremely thankful for all that life had to offer, especially the love
of his devoted wife, Jodie, who is half his age.

Now, cynics will say this display of gratitude is just another act in
the life of a man drawn to drama like a moth to a flame.

But then the Bible says - and Mississippi knows a thing or two about
the Bible - that a prophet is not without honour, except in his own
country and among his own kin.

And perhaps being sent away to such a faraway place was just what the
Prince of Pot needed to renew himself and reinvent his brand. It
certainly seems so.

The other question I'd always ask myself was whether Emery was part of
the solution to the drug problem or was the problem itself.

Was he a dedicated activist who used millions from his seed-selling
business to fund various worthy pro pot campaigns?

Or was he simply a drug pusher who exploited a fashionable cause as a
cover to make millions in illegal profits?

After studying the court transcript of Emery's Seattle sentencing in
2010, I suspect the truth lies in between.

I agree with defence lawyer Richard Troberman that, thanks partly to
Emery's efforts, "draconian marijuana prohibition laws are being
reformed through the legitimate political process."

I also understand why Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg said
Emery had essentially compounded "the growing problem of violence
surrounding marijuana grows."

But history will undoubtedly look kindly on Emery. It'll ignore the
pot entrepreneur's obvious faults and admire his role as a colourful
agent for long-overdue change.

Prophets are like that. They can be a pain in the ass, but by
definition they run ahead of the pack.

And we should at least listen to them, as I have been lucky to have
done for a couple of days under the Mississippi sun.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D