Pubdate: Tue, 12 Aug 2014
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2014 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Nick Eagland
Page: A6

POT ACTIVIST EMERY SAYS HE'S UNCHANGED

B.C. marijuana activist Marc Emery returns to Canada on Tuesday 
morning after a four-and-a-half-year stint in U.S. prisons for 
selling marijuana seeds to a U.S. buyer. Nick Eagland of Postmedia 
News phoned him at a Louisiana detention centre to learn more about his return.

Q What's the plan for today?

A I get put on a plane at probably about 10 or 11 (EST) in the 
morning and arrive in Detroit around three. At that point, U.S. 
marshals deliver me under the tunnel to the Canadian border point and 
[wife] Jodie and some friends of mine should meet me there. If it's 
nice weather, we'll have [a few] hours in Centennial Park by city 
hall. Hopefully by nine or 10 o'clock, Jodie and I will retire and go 
get something to eat. Then we've got to get on a plane at six in the 
morning and fly to Toronto for a whole variety of things, not the 
least of which is to buy some stuff like new glasses and a cellphone. 
I've never texted in my life so people have to show me how these 
things all work.

Q How does it feel to be coming home?

A People ask me if I'm excited and I'm not really excited because 
I've been here so long, I really don't know any other life other than 
being behind bars in these dirtbag prison cells and dormitories. If I 
look outside there's always razor wire. If I get taken anywhere 
outside of prison I'm shackled up ... handcuffed and leg-ironed and a 
waist belt of chains around me. When they finally deliver me to 
Windsor and I see a sunset without razor wire and I don't have any 
shackles on me, then I guess I'll kind of believe it.

Q How do you think prison has changed you?

A I don't think it's changed me at all, but the one thing you do 
learn is that you can adapt to anything. I've been in six different 
kinds of prisons in my time in the U.S. and some are horrible and 
some are all right, but you adapt to all of them. Once you're in a 
place like this . you kind of make that your home and the rest of the 
world kind of slowly recedes from memory and from experience. I 
stayed the same and that served me well in prison. I don't remember 
getting upset very often and I certainly didn't have any 
confrontations with any inmates or guards or anything like that.

Q Have any interesting prison stories?

A I did see violence, but nothing ever came close to me. Prisoners, 
in my experience, were very atypical to what you see on TV. I was 
amazed how many people who were serving 10, 12 years in prison, their 
first instinct when they got out was to sell drugs or grow marijuana 
or do something against the law again which could put them behind 
bars for another 15, 20 years - it was just nutty that they had not 
planned on any kind of legitimate lifestyle when they got out.

Q What are your expectations for when you return to B.C.?

A They tell me that they've got 35 dispensaries in Vancouver - I find 
that phenomenal. That's almost like it's legal without being legal 
and that's a very peculiar kind of Twilight Zone to find myself in. 
The way technology has influenced people - my wife says, 'People look 
at their screens everywhere they go, Marc.' She said no one makes eye 
contact in lineups any more, everybody's always looking at their 
screens on the bus or on the SkyTrain.

Q What do you think of Jodie's political plans?

A: My deep-seated feeling is that Liberals are so nervous about me, 
they'll probably do anything to derail her successfully getting the 
nomination in Vancouver East because otherwise, if she gets the 
nomination, the brain trust of the Liberals will be worried about 
what I might say over the next year. She's a terrific speaker, she's 
a terrific mind, she's got amazing compassion and she's a terrific 
Canadian who would make a great representative, but she's saddled 
with me and I don't have the same reverence for the process that she's showing.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom