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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Canada: 'Prince Of Pot' Gets Out Of Jail
Darren Bernhardt Regina Leader-Post, Canada
Tuesday 19 Oct 2004 SASKATOON - Released on Monday after 61 days behind bars, marijuana activist and entrepreneur Marc Emery knelt in the Saskatoon snow and kissed the cannabis-leaf flag his supporters have flown across from the courthouse since Day 1. He then launched into a contemptuous diatribe against Saskatchewan's "intolerable" attitude and promised to try changing it from the inside. He plans to establish a chapter of the Marijuana Party within three months and offer a full slate of candidates in the next provincial election. Emery, the self-proclaimed prince of pot, was released from the Saskatoon Correctional Centre at 8 a.m. after serving two-thirds of his sentence, as required by law. He stood in driving winds and snow to thank about 20 people who gathered to welcome him back to freedom. "I was joking with some people ( prior ) to jail, saying that going to jail in Saskatoon was like being sent to Siberia. Now I get out and it is exactly like Siberia," Emery said, then remarked about the province itself. "This is a rough place to start out. It's one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, over time, to try and form a modern day society. It's a place where droughts hit every five or 10 years, the weather and landscape are formidable and there is tensions between whites and natives. "If you had to choose somewhere in Canada to live, you'd really need a good reason to live in Saskatchewan. And they ( lawmakers ) aren't creating one. There is no beacon of tolerance and enlightenment that makes you overlook everything else." Emery praised his local supporters who maintained a vigil across the street from the provincial courthouse where he was sentenced Aug. 19 to three months in jail after pleading guilty to passing a joint at a pot rally in Kiwanis Park in March. "The people here are tough. You wouldn't get that in Vancouver, they're too soft," he said That's what's hopeful about Saskatchewan: there is a spirit to adapt and overcome as proven by those who settled here and those who still live here. He made reference to Saskatoon's prohibitive past as a temperance colony, suggesting the new Marijuana Party will deal with that narrow-mindedness. Marijuana smokers are people who simply want to pursue "a peaceful and honest living of their lifestyle," he said. "When you send somebody like me to jail for three months -- someone with children, who's a good citizen and believes in the responsibilities and obligations of citizenship -- for passing a joint, it's telling everybody to stay well away from here because this is not a progressive community where their children will grow up in a tolerant environment. This is a backwards place." Emery is the leader of the B.C. Marijuana Party, owns a marijuana seed store and Internet business in Vancouver and also operates the Iboga Therapy House, which offers a treatment of chemical dependence using an experimental psychoactive substance called Ibogaine, from the root of an African plant. He funds the $150,000 annual cost to run the facility and claims to pay $12,000 per month in personal income tax. "It's incumbent upon me, with my resources and my talent, to go out and help the people being oppressed who are poor," he said. "I'm grateful to be their spokesperson."
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