Committed to the Cause

For nearly half
a decade, Mississippi’s Yazoo County Federal Correctional Institution was home to
Canadian- born cannabis activist Marc Emery. The high profile reform figure—known
for embarking on country-wide advocacy tours, sponsoring a successful 1994
court challenge which prompted an Ontario judge to overturn the prohibition of
cannabis related literature, creating Cannabis
Culture Magazine in 1998 plus Pot TV in early 2000—is now free and more
ambitious than ever.

It was that
blind ambition and a hyper-advanced sense of business savvy that launched Emery
into his position as a social and political figure with an emphasis on the
herb. In 1991—while on probation for selling banned copies of 2 Live Crew’s As Nasty as They Wanna Be—Emery began
selling copies of cannabis literature such as how-to books on cultivation and High Times Magazine—also illicit under
Canada’s judicial laws.

But merely
wrestling with the tip of the iceberg deters from true Emery fashion. In accordance
with his typical ballsy persona, Emery then decided to sell copies of the
banned grow books outside of the London Ontario police station, encouraging the
police to detain him to no avail. During this time, he also sponsored visits
from cannabis luminaries such as Ed Rosenthal, Steven Hager, Jack Herer and
Paul Mavrides. The always progressive Emery was able to fund visits from these
big names utilizing the reserves earned from his highly successful bookstore in
downtown London, Ontario which he opened at the age of 16.

However, his
serious business on the cannabis spectrum—the one that vastly spiked the digits
in his bank account and unfortunately landed him a four year vacation in a
murky Mississippi prison—didn’t come till 1995 in the form of Hemp BC—a
cannabis seed and paraphernalia retailer located in Vancouver, British Columbia.
His attentive eye to supply and demand caused an onslaught of attention, so
much that the Wall Street Journal ran
a front page feature on Emery and in his endeavor December of that year.
However, the attention definitely came with some disadvantages.

One month later,
in January of 1996, Hemp BC was raided. Emery’s products were seized and he was
given a flurry of fines including a $2,200 base fine, a $2,000 fine for four counts
of selling cannabis seeds and $200 fine for distributing and promoting
vaporizers. But of course—in what we will continue to refer to as typical Marc
Emery fashion— he re-opened the shop doors the following day.

Over the next
two years, Emery expanded Hemp BC to include a grow shop, a legal assistance
center and a cannabis café with built in vaporizers in every table. On October 12,
1997, Emery was featured in an episode of CNN’s Impact titled “Cannabis Canada.” Here, the announcer referred to him
as “The Prince of Pot” and the kitschy epithet has followed him throughout his
career ever since.

After being
raided again in 1998, the crowned “Prince of Pot” moved his business venture to
a solely online operation. From 1998 till 2005, he distributed mail order
cannabis seeds across Canada and the United states until his third arrest on
July 29, 2005 in Nova Scotia while at a Hempfest. Emery posted bail and spent
the next several years fighting his impending extradition.

However, on May
20, 2010, Emery was deported from Canada to the U.S. He was held till sentencing
in Seattle, WA in September of 2010 where he received his five-year prison
sentence. Emery served a little over four years in a Mississippi medium
security prison where he was also subjected to three weeks in solitary
confinement. He was released 235 days early on good behavior.

Emery has been
cited as saying, “I’d much rather be in front of a Canadian jury in a Canadian
court. It’d probably still keep me out of the seed business for the rest of my
life, alas, but it certainly would lay people’s fears of a sovereignty
intrusion to rest.”

Marc Emery’s
prison sentence formally ended on July 9, 2014. He was then transferred to an
immigration facility—LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, La.— where he was
issued a temporary passport and flown to Detroit on August 12 where he crossed the
border back into his home-country of Canada and back into his life of advocacy.

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Today, Marc
Emery is back doing what he does best. So far, his post-prison plans include a trip
to Spain to speak in September of this year, a Canadian college tour set to
begin in January of 2015, a 30-city Canadian tour spanning from September 10 to
October 17, 2015 and a stop in Vienna, Austria and South Africa along the way.