Pubdate: Sun, 29 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
Page: A8
Author: Jon Ferry

MARC EMERY CLAIMS VICTORY IN DRUG WAR

A Province Exclusive - Vancouver Marijuana Activist Marc Emery Still 
Has Two Years To Serve In A U.S. Jail, But He Isn't Singing The 
Prison Blues Because He Believes He's Fast Being Vindicated For His 
Stand On Marijuana

YAZOO CITY, Miss. - Vancouver cannabis crusader Marc Emery may be 
facing two more frustrating years behind bars in the Deep South of 
the United States. But he's more confident than ever he's winning the 
war on drug prohibition.

The Prince of Pot believes the drug legalization campaign he's waged 
for more than 30 years is already over at the "intellectual" level. 
And it's only a matter of time before marijuana and other 
recreational drugs are sold in stores in Canada and the U.S. - and 
taxed and regulated just like liquor and cigarettes.

"The end of prohibition is close, five years for marijuana or less," 
he told me from inside the U.S. federal correctional complex where 
he's serving a five-year term for selling marijuana seeds. "And I can 
take a lot of credit for it."

Crisply dressed in khaki prison fatigues and black boots, Emery said 
he was heartened that John McKay, the former U.S. attorney who helped 
put Emery in jail, has had a Saul-on the-road-to-Damascus conversion 
and is now championing a Washington State initiative to legalize pot.

He's also encouraged that a raft of Canadian VIPs, including four 
former B.C. attorneys-general, have jumped on the decriminalization bandwagon.

"I'm running out of people who disagree with me anymore," the pot 
entrepreneur quipped, as we sipped pop together inside the visitors' 
area of the massive, razor-wire-clad jail northwest of the 
Mississippi state capital of Jackson.

The 54-year-old activist, who once raised the ire of Canadian and 
U.S. cops by publicly flaunting his marijuana-smoking habits, even 
admits he doesn't miss the weed that he first smoked in 1980, when he was 22.

"It's the most common question I'm asked in letters and even among 
inmates here, but I have never once thought of marijuana in the 
actual in two years," he said in a prison email. "Not missed smoking 
it. In fact, I've never thought about it once."

Emery explained that this might stem from the realization that he 
misses nothing except his devoted wife, Jodie, who runs what remains 
of his once-thriving pot empire - which, he says, grossed $15 million 
between 1995 and 2005.

The 27-year-old Jodie, now owner and operator of Cannabis Culture on 
West Hastings, flies down from Vancouver to visit him every two to four weeks.

"I think of her every hour of every day," Emery said, adding he 
spends much of his time practising bass guitar and honing his skills 
as leader of Yazoo, an interracial rock band named after the prison's 
rural hometown, known for its blues musicians.

"I never believed I would emerge from prison an accomplished 
musician, a band leader, playing music I have loved my whole life, 
with other far more accomplished and talented musicians," he said in 
another email. "This is a miracle that I'm very grateful for."

My prison visit, which Emery says is the first by any journalist in 
the two years since he's been locked up in the U.S., wasn't easy to 
arrange. And I wasn't allowed to bring in a pen, notepad, tape 
recorder or other reporting tools. Taking pictures on the property 
was also a no-no, and my rental car was searched. But what really 
surprised me was how tanned and fit Emery looked compared to how he 
appeared when I last saw him on TV in Vancouver.

I asked him whether this wasn't due to the fact that prison had 
forced him to give up marijuana (and that being caught with pot could 
lead to a whole range of punishments, including up to three months in 
solitary).

Emery insisted this was not so. It was simply that he was much less 
stressed and had far fewer legal/ money worries than when, at the 
helm of the world's largest marijuana seed-selling business, he was 
facing the sobering prospect of extradition to the United States.

Judging by what he says and how he appears, he's fitting well into 
prison life as the only Canadian among 1,700 mostly black inmates, 
many of them serving what appear to be cruelly long sentences for 
crack cocaine and other drug offences.

Coming from outside with no "cultural baggage" obviously helps, as it 
does for former newspaper publisher Conrad Black, another Canadian 
celebrity who's been doing hard time in the U.S. south.

But Emery says prison life is probably harder on Black because he's 
older and used to luxury in his life. "I come from a more working 
class/ middle class background so it's not so difficult for me," he said.

The Mississippi climate is also in his favour.

Indeed, Emery says he far prefers the fresh air and sunny climate in 
the Magnolia State to the "morose" Vancouver weather.

"And I have never had an unkind word spoken to me by any inmate in 
two years," he said.

"And I am frequently asked, probably every day, for some help or 
information, as they think of me as a useful, knowledgeable person."

What perhaps misses most are fresh vegetables. However, little 
niceties are generally only a postage stamp away.

Yes, in the absence of cash, the $1 postage stamp is the universal 
prison currency.

And he says you can buy services like getting your hair cut, your 
cell cleaned, your running shoes washed or your headphones fixed for 
one to five stamps.

Smoking is officially prohibited, but contraband cigs tend to get 
broken up into four or five small cigarettes and sold for, say, 
stamps apiece. That means a single street cigarette can fetch $25 . . 
. with a couple of batteries and a piece of toilet paper serving as a 
makeshift lighter.

So life is not overly harsh. Indeed, Emery, who shares a cell, thinks 
he has fewer grey hairs now than when he did when he was in Vancouver.

"I didn't know your hair could reverse its direction like that 
regarding colour," he told me. "I was losing my hair from 2002 to 
2004. When I look at my hair, its thicker than it was some 10 years ago."

But is the natural-born showman, known in Vancouver for his 
take-no-prisoners outbursts, really a changed individual? Can a 
leopard change his spots?

Well, he says he's matured and learned to tone things down: 
"Confrontation will get you nowhere good in prison."

Violence in a medium-security prison, though, is always just around 
the corner. And Emery tells me that only a couple of weeks ago a 
Hispanic inmate suspected of being an informant was bludgeoned half 
to death by two others. He was apparently beaten over the head by a 
metal door-locker lock inside a sock.

Emery's official release date is July 9, 2014. But he could be free 
as early as next year, if Ottawa allows him to be transferred back to Canada.

On his return to B.C., he plans to have a big welcome-back bash 
outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, followed by a world tour with 
Jodie, including stops in Jamaica and Italy.

As for his career future, he says he'll finish the autobiography he's 
writing and try to become a radio talk show host, a job he used to do 
back in his hometown of London, Ont.

"One of the problems of the so-called entertainment right-wing radio 
shows I hear on many AM and FM channels here is they don't respect 
facts or balance.

"The discussion is all one-sided, and often just derision, insult and 
talking in a circular manner," he said.

"I believe I can provoke but still welcome all sides in a discussion."

Like it or not, in other words, you'll be hearing a lot more from 
Emery whatever band -- or bandwagon -- he's heading.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart