The US Drug War goes North

http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/Marc+Emery+sentence+reeks+injustice+mocks+sovereignty/2041190/story.html

After two decades as Canada’s Prince of Pot, Marc Emery will surrender himself today in B.C. Supreme Court and become the country’s first Marijuana Martyr.

Emery will begin serving what could be as long as five years behind bars as Uncle Sam’s prisoner for a crime that in Canada would have earned him at most a month in the local hoosegow. […]

Emery hasn’t even visited America but he was arrested in July 2005 at the request of a Republican administration that abhorred his politics.

He is planning to continue running the B.C. Marijuana Party from a U.S. prison.

Un-fucking-believable.

amazing

Something for Amnesty…

The most disturbing aspect of this case is the DEA is quite unapologetic about their motivation: they want to jail Emery because Emery utters political speech with which the DEA disagrees, not because he sells marijuana seeds.

  • warning: content is ok, but link itself may be NSFW:

http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/4685.html

I’m guessing that there was some backroom negotiating where the US made it perfectly clear that they wanted to make an example of him and are prepared to lean on Canada in some other way if we don’t cooperate. Either that or the police and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have gone spineless, but either way it doesn’t exactly reflect well on anyone involved.

Harper likes to lick American testicles and then take it in the rear. That’s the real problem.

Duuuude

STOP WASTING MY TAX DOLLARS.

The DEA needs to go to hell, ASAP.

hahaha

Emery is a jackass. Turning him into the public face of the legalization movement is a brilliant way to set it back another few years.

I’m eager to read Desslock’s take on this.

Am I missing something? The DEA is happy to bring down some bush-league politico they hate, and the law in Canada is unenforced. Okay, but that’s irrelevant.

You can’t ship marijuana seeds into the US. You also can’t sell porn to Saudi Arabians - hell, you can’t always sell porn to Canadians. Not agreeing with the law is different from building a business empire to profit by breaking it. The latter is only allowed if you’re a Kennedy, and I’m the only Kennedy that posts at Qt3.

Tommy Chong I actually felt bad for because it was such a clear case of selective prosecution. This guy? Really can’t muster any outrage.

Glenn, do you think an American who exports porn to a Saudi Arabian should be extradicted to face trial in Saudi Arabia?

PWNED

daamn

It’s pretty obvious that I was hinting that might happen. I know, it’s Saudi Arabia, they’d probably cut off your hands for masturbating with them or something.

But if, by way of example, you were sitting in the strip club you own in sunny Las Vegas, NV, taking phone orders for porn from Saudi Arabia and shipping to addresses there, in full knowledge of their laws which you were breaking,
And you built a multimillion dollar business out of it (because, after all, you can charge a hefty mark-up on illegal goods),
And you’d already been let off lightly for the exact same offense once before,
And your every act and word suggests that you intend to reoffend the moment you’re let out of jail,

It might be time for you to spend few years IN A SAUDI JAIL, yes. I don’t really think that “reeks of injustice or mocks our sovereignty” and I don’t care that he was selling marijuana seeds, any more than if he was shipping bootleg whisky in a DeLorean to 1920’s Chicago.

If you want to be an activist, fine. I even support his activist cause, to the extent that I understand it. But he got nailed for his big, blatantly illegal enterprise, and smuggling is only highly profitable because you’re risking a big jail sentence if you get caught doing it.

Feel free to pick apart my hypo and let me know where I go off the rails.