(Ed. note: This is how news coverage in the age
of People Magazine changes the public perception of an issue. The facts, what,
when, why, don’t matter as much as what we are supposed to think about the
"Who." The fact that the police don’t like him makes them, not him, look
bad.)
See
A Profile Of Cannabis
Canada Entrepreneur Marc Emery By His Hometown Newspaper The Toronto
Star
lettertoed@thestar.com
http://www.thestar.com/
June 27, 1998
By Thomas Walkom
AGITATING FOR AN END TO POT LAWS
MARIJUANA GROWERS even have their own lobbyist, in the form of transplanted Ontario
libertarian Marc Emery.
He is the man Vancouver dopers love and the RCMP loves to hate.
Constable Vince Arsenault, of the Surrey drug squad, refers to Emery as part of the
"dark side" - pro-pot forces that constantly agitate in the media to have
marijuana legalized. Indeed, the former London, Ont., bookseller has long been crusading
against the state.
A one-time candidate for the right-wing Freedom Party of Ontario, Emery made a point of
flouting Sunday shopping laws in the late ‘80s and anti-obscenity laws in the early
‘90s. In 1991, he was convicted for selling obscene, anti-women rap music tapes. The
same year. he openly sold what is called illegal drug literature - magazines and comic
books that promoted pot smoking.
Setting off for India in 1992, he ended up two years later in Vancouver, still
interested in both libertarianism and marijuana. That’s where he started up Hemp
B.C., a store selling marijuana literature, and the next-door Cannabis Cafe.
Customers and staff routinely smoke marijuana in Hemp B.C. - even
when the RCMP drug squad comes visiting. ("We don’t bother arresting,"
explains an RCMP officer. "For simple possession, it’s not worth it.")
The Cannabis Cafe, Emery says, mixes marijuana and hashish oil in its food but
doesn’t sell dope. Prospective pot buyers, he says, have to go to the Cross-town Cafe
across the street to buy.
Now facing 15 drug-related charges (including one for assaulting a police officer),
Emery has passed over legal ownership of his cafe and store to another transplanted
Ontarian, former Toronto resident Shelley Frances. Frances, a single mother who has lived
in B.C. for four years, prefers to call herself Sister Icee.
See
Sister Icee Raises The
Ante; Vancouver Didn’t Apologize For Hemp BC Raid;
So Now She Wants An Icy $1 Million
Emery now concentrates on his marljuana seed business. From his apartment in downtown
Vancouver, he and his assistants field calls from around the world.
A packet of 10 marijuana seeds can range from $20 to $375.
On the day The Star visits, Andrew from Vancouver Island is clutching a bag of
marijuana buds while two assistants man the phones. "Marc," yells one, "the
guy from Australia’s on the phone again and I can barely understand him. I think
he’s asking about an order he gave."
Emery slips behind a computer and punches in a command. "I don’t see any
record here," he says. "Let me talk to him" After a few minutes, Emery
hangs up. "He sent the order to B.C. Hemp," he explains. "It’s okay.
Give Icee a call and ask her to pass it along."
Emery is very jolly about his crusade against marijuana laws. He insists on selling
seeds because he says they don’t contain enough THC, the mood-altering ingredient in
marijuana, to qualify as a banned substance. The crown, it appears, disagrees, since one
charge he faces is for trafficking in marijuana seeds.
Emery says he is a good corporate citizen. "I’ve paid
more than $1 million in income taxes (from his marijuana operations) between 1994 and
1998," he says.
And he takes personal credit for revitalizing, through B.C. Hemp and the Cannabis Cafe,
one block of Vancouver’s sleazy downtown east side.
His one regret is that he had to change the name of the magazine he founded, Cannabis
Canada, to Cannabis Culture.
See
News From Vancouver: Three
Stories, Cannabis Canada Is Now Cannabis Culture,
Plus Two More Police Raids
"We have a lot of sales in the U.S.," he explains. "And
the Americans won’t buy anything with the word Canada in it."
(Ed. note: To our Canadian neighbors – It isn’t that we
don’t like you, it is just that, thanks to our educational system, we have no idea
what or where you are. Most Americans even think that the state of New Mexico is in
another country. It now puts New Mexico USA on its license plates. No kidding. And
they wonder why "drug education" doesn’t work. Just spell
"No?")
Supported