POT CRUSADER HAS HIGH HOPES

Marc Emery, the self-titled Prince of Pot, is no stranger to a jail
cell but this time he's heading south of the border and fully expects
he'll get a five-year sentence when he pleads guilty to a count of
distributing marijuana for selling cannabis seeds.

Emery, who also publishes Cannabis Culture Magazine, stopped in
Lethbridge Tuesday as part of his farewell tour before he pleads
guilty to the charge in a Seattle courtroom in September or October.
He was scheduled to give an evening presentation at the University of
Lethbridge Student Union Building, an event sponsored by the Southern
Alberta Cannabis Club and B.O.B. Headquarters. He's travelling across
the country and calling on supporters to ready themselves to lobby
politicians.

"The thing I am asking my supporters to do once I am sentenced and put
in a U.S. jail is to get me transferred back to Canada," Emery said.

In return for his guilty plea, other charges for conspiracy to money
launder and conspiracy to manufacture will be dropped. Two of his
employees have also pleaded guilty to distributing marijuana and are
awaiting sentencing, likely two years of probation. That allows him to
avoid facing longer prison terms and hefty financial penalties.

Emery gave up his fight against extradition on the advice of his
lawyers. Even so, he said he finds it ironic that the biggest
beneficiaries of his seed business were the Canadian and British
Columbian governments. He maintains he conducted his business out in
the open and paid taxes on the money he made. But he admits to being
belligerent and unrepentant, too, and that likely hasn't won him any
favours with the U.S. criminal justice system.

His ultimate goal has always been to legalize marijuana because he
believes it's the right thing to do. He became a crusader for
marijuana users after reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged some 30 years
ago.

"Ever since, I've been on this one-man tear to bring justice to the
people I thought were most oppressed and unable to defend themselves,"
Emery said. "Nobody was defending the marijuana people when I started
in 1990. There were a quarter of a million people in jail then as
there are now for marijuana. So there's no group of people on Earth
that have been scapegoated in as large numbers and with that kind of
punishment as the cannabis people."

More people are being arrested for growing, selling or possessing
marijuana every year and that creates its own set of problems, he
said. Prisoners violate each other and gangs wage turf wars on the
street because of the lucrative profits involved.

"All the things that do kill you are legal - tobacco, alcohol, guns,
fast cars and fatty foods, even Walkerton, Ontario had eight people
die from the government-approved water, Maple Leaf Foods (through
listeriosis-contaminated products) killed people, basically everything
out there will kill you but marijuana will not. And yet it's held in
the highest degree of revulsion by the government. To me it's very,
very curious."

While some gains have been made, including medical marijuana and
industrial hemp production, progress has still been slow. He cites
statistics that show more than half of people support legalizing
marijuana but only about a quarter support legalizing the sale of marijuana.

"So there's a disconnect. People believe they should have it without
punishment but they don't provide a way for anyone to get it without
punishment," he said. "We're scapegoated because the government has
always wanted to control free thinkers and they'll use violence and
suppression of any kind. Citizens insisting on their freedom are a
terrible inconvenience to government."