U.S. officials characterized Emery as a “drug dealer” because he sold marijuana seeds to American customers via mail order. Emery, along with two of his Cannabis Culture magazine employees were originally charged with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana and money laundering.
Emery ran his magazine, seed and head shop businesses openly and transparently, declaring all of his income and paying all required taxes. The government of Canada received about $378,000 generated from Emery’s businesses and the provincial government of British Columbia has received about $200,000. Every Member of Parliament in Canada, all 305, had a free subscription to Cannabis Culture magazine, which had Emery’s seed catalog in every issue. Nobody ever complained…until Emery embarrassed the Bush administration by speaking out against the failing War on Drugs and how it was affecting Canadians.
At first, the penalties facing Emery and his employee’s were staggering. Emery and his staffers looked at life imprisonment and under Drug Kingpin legislation Emery himself could be executed—selling over 60,000 seeds qualified him for the death penalty in the United States. In 2009, Emery “willingly” accepted 5 years in an American prison.
At the time of Emery’s high profile arrest, American drug enforcement officials boasted that it was a “significant blow” to marijuana trafficking and to the legalization movement, but In contrast, Washington state issued the first licences for stores to legally sell recreational marijuana earlier this week.
According to the blogs on his site there are public parties planned for Toronto and then Vancouver. And then he and Jodie will be travelling abroad, on a speaking tour through Europe and a bit of a vacation. A second trip planned for 2015 is expected to take them to Jamaica, Uruguay, Argentina, and South Africa.
Do you think the American government held Emery as a political prisoner? Let us know in the comments below
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Of course he was a political prisoner and the Canadian governments complicity in his extradition was shameful. Hopefully his prison sentence was the last wheeze from the dying "War on Drugs."