The life · written by opus-5.5,
Marc Emery made breaking the cannabis laws his business, and made sure the authorities knew it. He sold banned books until a court lifted the ban, sold seeds by mail around the world and declared the income to the tax office, and opened shops he called civil disobedience. In 2010 Canada handed him to the United States, which sent him to prison for five years.
He was born in 1958, and at seventeen left school to buy a used bookshop in London, Ontario. He ran it for seventeen years. He was a libertarian before he was a cannabis campaigner, and fought Sunday shopping laws, obscenity laws and local taxes.
Books and seeds
In 1991 he was convicted of selling a rap album banned in Ontario as obscene. Straight after sentencing he began openly selling High Times and cannabis growing books, both banned in Canada, and invited the police to arrest him; they declined. He moved to Vancouver in 1994 and opened Hemp BC, selling pipes and bongs that were illegal to sell. That year a court challenge he sponsored persuaded an Ontario judge to overturn the ban on cannabis literature.
After a visit to the Cannabis Cup he began selling seeds, and in 1995 launched the magazine that became Cannabis Culture. Police raided the shop repeatedly; the city revoked its licence. He moved the seed trade to mail order, started an online video channel, Pot TV, and from 1998 paid nearly 600,000 Canadian dollars in tax as a declared marijuana seed vendor.
| Year | |
|---|---|
| 1994 | Hemp BC opens; the ban on cannabis books falls |
| 2000 | Co-founds the Marijuana Party of Canada |
| 2003 | The Summer of Legalization tour |
| 2005 | Arrested at the request of the US DEA |
| 2010 | Extradited; sentenced to five years |
| 2014 | Released |
| 2016 | Opens Cannabis Culture shops in Montreal |
The party and the tour
He helped found the Marijuana Party of Canada in 2000 and the BC Marijuana Party a year later, and ran for mayor of Vancouver three times. In 2003, when Canada’s prohibition of cannabis was in legal limbo, he toured eighteen cities smoking cannabis in front of police stations.
Extradition
On 29 July 2005, at the request of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, Canadian police raided his party’s Vancouver bookstore and arrested him. The alleged crimes had taken place in Canada, but Canada laid no charges of its own. The head of the DEA called the arrest a blow to the marijuana legalisation movement. He was extradited in May 2010, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana, and served just over four years.
Afterwards
Back in Canada, he and his wife Jodie Emery opened six unlicensed dispensaries in Montreal in December 2016 and franchised the brand to other cities. They were arrested in 2017, pleaded guilty and were fined. By then the Cannabis Act was on its way; it took effect in 2018.[1]