Pubdate: Fri, 01 Feb 2013
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2013 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

WASH. STATE NEEDS PRINCE OF POT

Initiative 502: Americans Looking For Marijuana Consultant, And Emery
Would Fit Bill

Some Province readers, especially those who think Vision Vancouver is
doing a positively heavenly job propelling us by push bike to the
promised land, have suggested I find another line of work.

And I confess a lucrative new position as a high-flying consultant in
an emerging industry with smoking hot growth prospects does have its
attractions.

Which is why I was fascinated to learn Washington state is looking to
hire people to provide its liquor control board with consulting
services, only to discover the board didn't actually want those with
experience with liquor, but with pot. It was, in fact, seeking those
who could assist with "the implementation of the legalized
recreational marijuana system enacted by the voters with Initiative
502."

Initiative 502, you may recall, was approved handily by Washington
voters last November.

It legalized the adult possession of small amounts of heavily taxed
weed under a state-licensed system of growers, processors and
retailers. Sales are to begin this December.

My own pot experience is decidedly dated. So, on Wednesday, I
contacted a man of both knowledge and conviction - Vancouver activist
Marc Emery, the Prince of Pot currently in a Mississippi jail serving
out the last third of a five-year term for the cross-border selling of
marijuana seeds.

I suggested to Emery via prison email he might want to apply to serve
as a consultant on everything from how marijuana is "grown,
cultivated, harvested, cured and processed" to how it should be
"packaged, labelled, transported and sold at a retail level."

The 54-year-old Emery seemed in good humour, replying that some of the
best applicants for the job were behind bars. Indeed, he called
himself one of the world's "pre-eminent experts in all aspects of
marijuana cultivation and marketing," with an understanding of every
kind of horticultural technique.

In true Super Bowl fashion, he boasted the Emery brand would lend
Washington's new legal marijuana operations "a credibility few other
applicants can provide." All the liquor board had to do was dispatch
someone down to federal prison in Yazoo City, Miss., to interview him.

The liquor board said Thursday that wasn't likely to happen. 
Spokesman Mikhail Carpenter, though, confirmed the job was open to 
Canadians, including Emery: "Yes, it's a consulting position, we're 
looking for somebody who meets the qualification of the request for proposals."

Emery's wife Jodie, meanwhile, is running as the B.C. Green Party
candidate for Vancouver-West End in the May election. But she says she
continues to campaign for a legal pot-distribution system similar to
the one being set up in Washington state.

Indeed, she agrees with a draft policy paper by the B.C. branch of the
federal Liberal Party that marijuana legalization could mean scores of
new Canadian jobs. The paper recommends the weed be sold "through
specialty private stores and/or anywhere regulated liquor sales take
place."

Pot, in other words, is the new plonk. But our neighbours to the south
are ahead of us. And, come December, you'll just have to line up with
other B.C. cross-border shoppers to smoke it ... legally, that is.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D