Mark Emery and his employees are all Canadian citizens. If they have broken Canadian laws in Canada, then let them be charged and tried in Canada. If we allow US authorities to come across our border to capture and jail our fellow citizens then we are no longer a sovereign nationa!
Who Is Mark Emery?
Mark Emery is a Canadian citizen, born in London, Ontario. He is Canada's foremost marijuana activist and advocate for the cannabis culture.
Mark is the founder of the BC Marijuana Party, the owner of Pot-TV, and the publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine. He has also twice run for Mayor of Vancouver.
Without Mark Emery's efforts and brave leadership, there would be no mariuana seeds for sale anywhere in Canada. Even bongs, pipes, grow books and pot magazines were unavailable in Canada until Emery began selling them in this store in 1995.
Mark's other projects have included the lboga Therapy House, the Museum of Psychoactive Substances, the annual Vancouver Tokers Bowl, and creating the US Marijuana Party.
Mark is an astute businessman, and used the profits from his seeds sales to support the cannabis legalization movement. For the past decade, Mark has been a major source of funds for virtually every legalization effort, activist campaign and legal challenge in Norther America.
Mark Emery is a hero to the global marijuana movement. He was dubbed "The Prince of Pot" by CNN in a 1997 feature story. The royal title stuck, and was even listed on the warrant used to arrest him.
Why Does America Want Him?
Mark Emery has been arrested and jailed many times in Canada, but always on minor marijuana charges, such as selling marijuana seeds, or "trafficking" by giving away small amounts of pot.
The longest jail sentence Mark has received was in Saskatoon, where he was sentenced to 90 days in 2004 for passing a single joint.
Canadian courst usually give out only fines for selling pot seeds, and it is not even considered an "arrestable offence" by Vancouver Police. Health Canadia would even refer its medical marijuana patients to Emergy's website for their seed supply.
Unsatisfied with Canada's tolerance for marijuana and politcal activism, US authorities decided to bypass Canada's judicial system and charge Mark Emery under American law.
Mark and his employees face no charges in Canada. They are all Canadian citizens whose actions took place entirely in Canada. Yet US authorities are claiming jurisdiction over them, and are demanding that all three be sent to America to receive a minimum sentence of 10 years to life imprisonment.
Will Candaians allow their fellow citizens to be extradited and given life sentences in the US for things which are not even considered a crime in Canada?
Why Is This Important?
If Emery is extradited to the US then it will set a very dangerous precedent.
Canadians must protect our sovereignty, and our ability to create laws that are right for Canadians.
As a nation, Canada must not tolerate foreign police coming into our country to arrest our citizens for "crimes" commited on Canadian soil.
If Emery has committed a crim, then let him be charged by Canadian police, and tried in Canada under our nation's laws.
If Canada's government agress to bypass our own justice system, and sends Emery and his employees to the US for trial and imprisonment, then it will mark the end of Canada's status as a self-determining nation.
Who will be next? Will Canada agree to extradite citizens who steal US satelite signals, or the owners of Canadian internet pharmacies that sell perscription drugs to Americans by mail-order? Gay marriage, cuban cigars and easy access to abortion are all allowed in Canada but restricted in the US. Which nation's laws will apply to Canadians in Canada?
What Is The Legal Argument?
Under the extradition treaty between Canada and the US, Canadians officials Must refuse to extradite if it appears that the prosecution is politically motivated. It also requires a refusal to extradite if the defendant would face unjust or oppressive penalties by Canadian standards. Both of these factors apply in this extradition request.
Ther are literally dozens of other pot seed sellers operating openly in Canada. US officials have clearly stated that they targeted Emery because of his political activities.
The head of the US Drug Enforcement Agency told the media that the Emery raid was "a significant blow-to the marijuana legalization movement," and added that "legalization lobbyists now have one less pot money to rely on."
In regards to the extreme severity of the sentence, in 1987, Canadian courts ruled that a seven-year mandatory minimum sentence for importing or exporting is unconstitutional. Yet Emery and his employees all face 10-year minimum sentences in the US. Thus the penalties the three will face are clearly unjust and oppressive by Canadian standards.
What Can You Do?
We need your help to ensure that Mark Emery and his two employees are not extradited to the USA.
Please take the time to call all the numbers below. Be polite, and tell those people why you think Mark Emery and his employees should remain in Canada.
Also please contact the media, newspaper, call in to radio talk shows, and find other ways of spreading the word about this terrible attack on Canadian sovereignty.
We need your support, and frankly we need your money! Please make a donation to the BC Marijuana Party (It is tax deductible) or visit our store in person or online. Every penny helps our ongoing efforts!
Together, we will make a difference!
Who To Contact
Please take the time to call these numbers and leave a message saying that Canada should not send Mark Emery to a US prison.
* Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin: 613-992-4211 and 866-599-4999
* Candaian Justice Minister, Irwin Cotler: 613-995-0121 and 514-283-0171
* Conservative Leader, Stephen Harper: 613-996-6740 and 403-253-8203
* Canadian NDP Leader, Jack Layton: 613-947-0867 and 416-405-8914
* BC Attorney General, Wally Oppal: 250-387-1866
* BC NDP Leader, Carole James: 250-952-4211 and 250-387-3655
Also write letters to the newspaper, call in to radio shows, and spread the word about this injustice! [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on September 12, 2005]
Stumble It!
<br />
Makes the case that DEA went after Emery as he was on the verge of legalizing <br />
marijuana in Canada. <br />
<br />
Trailer is here: <br />
<br />
<a href="http://trailervision.com/trailer.php?id=158">http://trailervision.com/trailer.php?id=158</a>
Emery should have stuck to selling to Canadians. It would have been very simple, no US shipping or billing address. Not a hard system to set up.
Sovereignty my butt. This guy is a pot dealer who thought he was untouchable. He needed to do more research on what he could get away with and needed to stop using so much of his own product. He seemed to be OK with getting fines and minor jail time in Canada. Now that he's facing some real time, he's crying for help from anyone who will listen and trying any arguement that will allow him to avoid prosecution.
Let him have his trial and his soapbox (he's gotten more PR on this than his past 10 years of activism). Give him the lawyers he needs and let them make whatever arguement to the courts they can. But don't confuse the issue... it's not about sovereignty, it's about a drug dealer clinging to whatever protections our laws can afford him.
3 million Americans who possibly support legalization. That's not even counting the amount of people just buying it already grown. What are we talking here, 4 or 5 million people?
The U.S approach is to ignore it, let laws send them to jail, and build more jails. All a while this substance has more positive data then tobacco, alcohol and caffein. Read up Michael. Many legal substances cause allot of social problems and have much more risk to the human body. Even Scientific American magazine revealed new studies of marijuana. Revealing that there are some chemicals not sure of their affects yet. But the same could be said about the 800+ chemicals found in caffein. Some of those chemicals which have caused tumors in rats. Many of them still no studies to show the affects. Yet its still legal. I won't bother with tobacco and alcohol, everyone knows the negative affects of them already.
Anyhow, the report in the magazine revealed some interesting similarities between the human brain and marijuana. Apparently we share something in common. You would have to read the report.
Its pretty pathetic for the authorities to go after Mark for this cause, while wasting up time that could be used to go after biker gangs, cocain dealers.
Here's a quote that expands on this.
"""We see military hardware, poison, and soldiers used against fields of plants around the world.
We might almost comprehend why the DEA violates other country's sovereignty to go after Pablo Escobar and cohort "kingpins" who allegedly engage in wholesale violence to maintain hard drug empires. But why is the full force of the U.S. government used against a candid cannabis seed salesman and activist like Marc Emery?
There are guys who ride big, loud motorcycles who are now in Canadian prison awaiting trial, and they are laughing at the irony of Emery's bust. These guys were taken in after Canadian police raided their heavily-fortified clubhouses and allegedly found hard drugs, weapons, and lots of cash.
When police raided Emery, they found magazines, bongs, a few seeds, no money, no hard drugs, no drugs at all, unless you consider seeds a drug.
There are allegations that the motorcycle guys engage in cross-border illegal business. So guess who gets busted in a cross-border extradition case and faces life imprisonment? The motorcycle guys? Naaah. It's Emery who faces the hardest prosecution and the longest prison term. """
It fascinates me how alcoholics have caused so much social chaos, and alcohol in general is a part of probably the majority of domestic disputes in families. A issue that goes as deep as a childs future, from a broken home to criminal future. Alcohol could be linked to so many different crimes. Not to mention the many people who die every year because someone decides his buz isn't going to affect his/her driving. Yet that substance is legal. all while someone who is caught selling marijuana seeds is facing 10 years.
Sorry for digressing.
Kevin
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Acoustic Guitar: This machine will kill facist.- Woody Guthrie
you can't equate selling non-lethal soft-drug
precursors to securities fraud, gun sales
or any crime with a victim.Cannabis
consumption is a victimless NON-crime,
and the laws prohibiting it are completely
irrational.On top of that, the relative sentences
the puritanical/hypocritical morality squad
in the States applies to victimless, non-lethal
soft-drug (cannabis) consumption/production are beyond
irrational, they are absolutely insane.
An appropriate analogy would be if Indonesia
banned coffee and you sold them coffee beans
through the mail.If they demanded extradition
and wanted to apply a brutally harsh sentence,
our gov't would have to refuse extradition as they
must in Emery's case.
If you actually support the U.S. anti-cannabis
policy and it's specific manifested sentences,
then you are an enemy of liberty and a promoter
of insane, irrational and totally unjust persecution.
---
"If you must kill a man, it costs you nothing to be polite about it." Winston Churchill
* Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin:
* Candaian Justice Minister, Irwin Cotler:
* Conservative Leader, Stephen Harper:
* Canadian NDP Leader, Jack Layton:
* BC Attorney General, Wally Oppal:
* BC NDP Leader, Carole James:
The above rat pack are usless, they do not respond to citizens who communicate a concern to them, the only way to get you country back and protect the Canadian citizens is send all political parties packing. Every post that is made on this site express problem with our political system and all problems are created by these weak kneed parties.
These politicans will send Mark across the boarder to the Yanks, but will welcome a dangerous man like Dick Cheney into Canada , go figure . These politicans even though they belong to different political parties all are playing the same game.
>Don't kid yourself that pot consumption is victimless.<
>
Dr. Caleb,
I'm going to assume Anon didn't mean it that way. I would disagree pot consumption is victimless. Smoking anything would be automatically creating a victim. Now what about smoking a vapor of marijuana? well researchers in the U.S have discovered the low health risk to smoking marijuana through a vaporizer. Studies for consumption through food or drink, they found no more risk then if you drank something with artificial falours. Apparently many people who take it for medical purposes consume it in food or drink.
So there is victims from the consumption of marijuana through smoke. I'm also going to assume its not pot smokers going out deciding to punch someone in the head, or throw their wife around. No that's alcohol drinkers.
I'm going to make a confession. I smoke I would say about 3 times per month, often times I stop for months at a time. Even stoped for 5 years.
I work a full time job now for the past 3 years. Volunteer for the red cross for the past 4 years. I have no criminal record. No driving offences. I go through my whole day with the philosophy "do something for someone everyday, for which you do not get paid--unknown".
Everyone that knows me, are always blown away when they find out I consume marijuana. But once I work through the myths with them, they come to understand. Not saying everything about marijuana is a myth. Just the majority of it is. Allot of people that are against marijuana are because of conditioning which even they don't understand. It was all part of a smear campaign which brainwashed everyone. It was so successful everyone still holds some of the beliefs.
There are successful local franchise owners, which I know of that smoke marijuana. Its to bad it makes a person unmotivated. Maybe they could be owning a corporation instead of just a franchise :-p
Kevin
---
Acoustic Guitar: This machine will kill facist.- Woody Guthrie
overdose, and produces less severe withdrawl symtoms than
those of caffeine.
If an adult decides to consume cannabis (smoked, vaporized
or eaten in foods), in the privacy of their own home
and doesn't drive while intoxicated, who is the
victim ? There IS no victim, so drop your
hypocritical, prohibitionist scheme.
When you criminalize adult soft-drug consumption, THEN
you create victims and empower organized crime.
If coffee was made illegal (it causes 1000 deaths/yr
and causes extreme irritability, inability to concentrate
and severe headaches when withdrawing), you
would criminalize normally peaceful people,
and create an organized crime coffee market.
If one has the right to drink alcohol (which
DIRECTLY causes 100,000 deaths per year
and produces severe withdrawl symptoms
in the form of delerium tremens), or
smoke tobacco (more lethal and addictive
than alcohol), then one must have
the right to consume cannabis.
If cannabis is illegal, then the respective
sentences for nicotine/alcohol consumption
or production should be 1000 X more
severe.
The U.S.A. has a gigantic prison
industry, filled with non-violent
soft-drug consumers.They have 5% of the
world population but 25% of the world's
prisoners.Some sentences in the States are so severe
that one could get life in prison for growing
1 plant.That is hypocritical, irrational
and insane when one measures the lethality
and addictiveness of cannabis, especially
compared with LEGAL, DEADLY, HIGHLY
addictive caffeine, alcohol & tobacco.
Unjust, irrational laws must NOT
be blindly accepted/applied.They
must be refuted and eliminated.
daily smokers smoke anywhere NEAR the 20 grams per day (600 grams per month, 7200 grams per year) tobacco
addicts consume.
If one labels cannabis smoking as dangerous, and
criminalizes/persecutes folks as a result, then
the respective sentences for tobacco consumption/production
must be 100 X more severe.
But there are alternatives to smoking cannabis.
Vaporizers, oral sprays and ingested food form.
It's really quite simple.The anti-cannabis
laws are entirely hypocritical, irrational,
scientifically baseless and insane.
You have no right, in a free and just society,
to criminalize someone for consuming (even smoking)
or producing a NON-lethal soft-drug.
Cannabis prohibitionists who aren't actually MORMONS,
are blindly hypocritical/puritanical prohibitionists...
...IOW, they are MORONS.More problems are
created than prevented by trying to slam an irrational, baseless, puritanical persecution scheme on
people who are doing no worse than having
a few beers or a cappuccino.
(this website often places the responses
at the bottom automatically)
I hope Michael got a chance to read what I wrote regarding that. He disagrees its a sovereignty issue. Which is fine. We will agree to disagree.
Kevin
---
Acoustic Guitar: This machine will kill facist.- Woody Guthrie
seeping into Canada, and they have set up a secret
office in Vancouver.... WITHOUT the knowledge
or consent of Canadians.
This is Canada, not the neo-fascist U.S.A., let's
say NO WAY, to the ruthless, clandestine persecutors
aka, the U.S. DEA.
It is all about the Bush administration incrementally destroying Canadian sovereignty and puritanically/hypocritically persecuting people
for non-lethal soft-drug consumption.
The only party on record as being against that
DEA based intrusion is Jack Layton's NDP.The
Liberals and Conservatives have given in
to rampant, invasive Americanization, as they
have no Canadian sovereignty backbone.Only
Jack Layton & the NDP support non-punitive
measures for adult marijuana use.
as the *relative* harm caused by cannabis.
If he was selling crystal meth, heroin or
crack cocaine to the States, the conclusions
could not or would not be the same.
But the truth is, he was selling the *precursors*
(seeds) of a non-lethal soft-drug.