Lothar121

Crusader, Drug Lord, mMartyr or Huckster?
Jane Armstrong | Globe and Mail | 08/06/2005

VANCOUVER -- He loves hockey and comic-book superheroes. But Marc Emery's greatest passion is riling authorities. Nearly everywhere he has lived or worked, he has left a trail of fuming police officers and bureaucrats.

From defending his right to sell sexually explicit magazines from his former bookstores in London, Ont., to lighting marijuana joints in front of police, Mr. Emery's true gift is rabble-rousing.

His second great talent is shameless spotlight-grabbing. He dropped out of high school, he once explained, because: "My idea of a good time was to take away the control from the teacher and install myself as the main influence in the class."

Like many a class clown, Mr. Emery, 47, may have gone too far.

This time, he has infuriated the powerful U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Unlike Canadian authorities, who have long turned a blind eye to Mr. Emery's illegal cannabis ventures, U.S. prosecutors do not find his life's work the least bit tolerable.

To them, he is a drug lord, and last year they sent undercover drug officers to Canada to pose as customers. Now they want him sent to the United States and put on trial. Mr. Emery faces charges of conspiracy to distribute cannabis seeds, produce marijuana and launder money. If convicted, he could be sentenced to between 10 years and life in prison.

He might need a superhero of his own to get out of this jam.

Looking fatigued after a week in a Vancouver-area remand centre, Mr. Emery returned yesterday to his Hastings Street bookstore to chat with reporters and huddle with supporters.

Comparing himself to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Mr. Emery said he is prepared to go to jail if it helps to further his beloved cause of legalizing marijuana.

"If I thought my death or my lifetime in prison -- even with great suffering -- would bring about the liberation of the hundreds of thousands of people around the world who are oppressed, I am looking forward to that," he said.

However, in an earlier interview, his wife, Cheryl Redick, said he is shaken at the gravity of the U.S. charges and fearful of a U.S jail term.

"He wouldn't last long," Ms. Redick said last week as she waited for friends to come up with $50,000 bail. "He'd be thrown in with the Hells Angels and those types. He's not equipped to deal with that."

Not surprisingly, his arrest at the request of U.S. drug officers has transformed Mr. Emery into a martyr on the West Coast, where marijuana activists number in the thousands. At his bail hearing in Vancouver this week, supporters who crammed into court gazed at the scruffily dressed defendant as though he were a rock star, waving and jumping to their feet when he was brought into court.

Outside, protesters -- some smoking joints -- jeered at the DEA, which initiated the elaborate undercover operation.

Mr. Emery's mythical status is sure to grow as the extradition case makes its way through the Canadian justice system. Not only is he seen as a freedom fighter among those battling to decriminalize marijuana, he also has become a symbol of Canada's right to pursue a more lenient drug strategy than its neighbour to the south. The DEA, they say, should mind its own business.

But not everyone has rushed to deify Mr. Emery.

Chief among them are the U.S. prosecutors who want to put him on trial in Seattle. They say he shamelessly shilled cannabis seeds to U.S. customers over the Internet and provided step-by-step instructions on how to cultivate them into marijuana plants.

In interviews, he has bragged that he has earned millions over the years from U.S. customers, who make up 75 per cent of his business.

Those taunts, said U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg, make Mr. Emery "our business." According to bank statements seized by U.S. police, more than $5-million has gone in and out of Mr. Emery's Vancouver bank accounts since 1999. "He's a drug trafficker," Mr. Greenberg said. "He's selling seeds that will be grown into illegal drugs."

Those who have known the activist for years are not surprised that he has found himself in trouble with U.S. drug officials.

"He alienated as many people as he attracted," said Tara Tarasewicz, who bought Mr. Emery's London bookstore, City Lights, in 1992. "He's unrestrained in an intelligent sort of way."

She said Mr. Emery enjoys the same mythic status in his hometown of London as he does on the West Coast. In fact, a stage version of his life so far, entitled Citizen Marc, is in the works.

Ms. Tarasewicz described Mr. Emery as a passionate libertarian-style crusader who took on any organization -- from London's downtown business improvement association to feminists -- that he believed tampered with individual freedoms.

After a run-in with a local feminist, whom he called a "jack-booted femi-Nazi," Mr. Emery refused to carry a women's studies section in his bookstore, angering many women in London.

He sold record albums that Ontario censors deemed obscene, and opened his store on Sundays when it was still against the law.

As is the case with his Vancouver operations, Mr. Emery's headquarters in London was his bookstore, which Ms. Tarasewicz described as a beacon for intellectuals and activists.

He was also a brilliant retailer, she said. "He can sell anything.

"I learned a lot just watching him. If he wasn't involved in this pot business he could definitely teach a fabulous marketing course and public relations at any university."

Indeed, Mr. Emery's lucrative seed-selling operation was the latest successful venture he has operated since he started selling comic books at 15. He rented a stall inside an antique store and was soon buying and selling comics by the hundreds. Two years later, when the storeowner retired, Mr. Emery's father lent him $10,000 to launch his own bookstore on the site.

City Lights became the base from which Mr. Emery launched his many causes.

He started political parties and newspapers. He regularly got himself arrested and got himself on TV.

Filmmaker Christopher Doty, who is producing Citizen Marc, said Mr. Emery's London years were spent searching for a cause that would combine his love for selling with political activism. But he never found it in London, Mr. Doty added.

In his 20s, he married an older woman and adopted and home-schooled her two sons. When the marriage broke up, he became involved with a woman who also had two children, whom he adopted as well.

In 1992, at 34, he grew disillusioned with life in Canada. "He always hoped that more people would get behind him," Mr. Doty said.

He moved his family to the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where he opened a guest lodge for tourists. The venture failed and he returned to Canada nearly penniless.

This time, Mr. Emery settled in Vancouver, Canada's epicentre of pot culture. He sold cannabis seeds through the mail and opened a store called Hemp B.C., which sold bongs, pipes and how-to books on grow operations. In marijuana activism and seed-selling, Mr. Emery found a way to marry a popular crusade with commerce.

In 2002, he reconnected with Ms. Redick, who is also from London and had worked in his bookstore as a teenager. The couple have been together ever since and share a $3,000-a-month apartment in Vancouver's West End.

In an interview, Ms. Redick said life with a crusader can be trying. When DEA officers entered the couple's apartment with a search warrant, they carted off her computer, which contained a daily diary.

The couple must now move to a cheaper apartment, and Ms. Redick, who operates a small design business, will have to find a better-paying job to help cover her husband's legal bills.

In Vancouver, some believe the United States is simply trying to scare Mr. Emery so he will stop selling seeds to customers there.

U.S. prosecutors disagree.

"I think that's wishful thinking on the part of Mr. Emery's supporters," Mr. Greenberg said. "We fully intend to follow this case through to trial."

Asked yesterday whether he is afraid of the possibility of spending the rest of his life in a U.S. jail, Mr. Emery replied: "No. I probably will be, but not now."

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