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By: Chris Selley, National Post

 

If someone were to assemble a world ranking of unjustly imprisoned people, and if he were to put Marc Emery anywhere near the top, I would not be sympathetic. Canada's so-called "prince of pot," scheduled to be sentenced today in Seattle to a stiff five years in prison (that's the sentence he plea-bargained to!) flagrantly violated the law. Wanting to smoke and sell pot isn't like being gay in Iran: It's something you can easily avoid, even though you shouldn't have to. However asinine, the law's the law. Like alcohol, which is legal -- and very much unlike tobacco, which is also legal -- marijuana is no better than harmless. We should all have the right to partake of our drug of choice, but on a spectrum of rights worth fighting, going to prison or dying for, it's not likely to win you a Nobel.

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By: Jill Drews, News 1130

 

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - The 'Prince of Pot' makes his last step toward a federal prison tomorrow. Marc Emery will be sentenced in a Seattle court room.

 

Emery has already signed a plea deal, meaning he will likely serve a five-year federal term for selling marijuana seeds to American customers. His wife Jody says she is worried. She's relatively close to her husband now, but he could end up in a number of American cities once the deal is done. "Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and California. We're hoping he gets sent to California, but it's whatever the Bureau of Prisons decides."

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By: Linda Solomon, Vancouver Observer

 

After a long extradition fight that ended earlier this year, Mark Emery is finally going to prison, news reports say.

 

Observers expect Emery to receive a five year prison term.

 

Emery's legal team essentially agreed to this in a plea bargain earlier in the year and Emery is expected to pull out of the agreement if the judge tries to impose a longer term.

 

"It has always been my sincere belief that the prohibitions on cannabis are hurtful to U.S. and Canadian citizens and are contrary to the constitutions of both countries," the 52-year-old wrote in the Sept. 1 letter.

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By Ian Mulgrew, Vancouver Sun

 

Canada's prince of pot, Marc Emery, spent Labour Day in a U.S. prison reading a newspaper column by his former prosecutor saying anti-cannabis laws are "dangerous and wrong."

 

In an insult to injury that should cause Ottawa to blush, the man who hounded Emery to face American drug and money-laundering charges declares the pot prohibition should be ended.

 

John McKay, now a Seattle University law professor, argued in the weekend article that the war against marijuana has failed, actually threatens public safety and rests on false medical assumptions.

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By: Kelly McParland, National Post

 

From the Department of the Mind-Bogglingly Bizarre, But True, we bring you this: John McKay, the former U.S. attorney for Seattle who prosecuted Canada’s self-styled prince of pot, Marc Emery, says the marijuana law he went to such trouble to enforce is utterly stupid.

 

Emery’s career has been amply documented. He was deported to the U.S. in May and is being held in Seattle, where he faces up to five years in jail after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana. McKay, now a law professor, indicted Emery in 2005 for sending out marijuana seeds through the mail.

 

So what does he think of the law? Read it all here. Below are some excerpts.

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By: Marc Emery, Cannabis Culture (Introduction by Jodie Emery)

 

Marc decided to write the complete story of his status as a political prisoner in the US federal prison system: what he does, what it's like, his future prospects at Sea-Tac Federal Detention Center in Seattle and wherever he gets sent after sentencing, and the process of returning to Canada.

 

This letter was written to be copied and sent to everyone who sends him mail so he doesn't have to write it out repeatedly, but he still writes personal messages along with every letter he sends out.

 

By Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood, Vancouver Sun

 

Nearly four years after President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led crackdown against drug traffickers, the cartels are smuggling more narcotics into the United States, amassing bigger fortunes and extending their dominion at home with such savagery that swaths of Mexico are now in effect without authority.

 

The groups also are expanding their ambitions far beyond the drug trade, transforming themselves into broad criminal empires deeply involved in migrant smuggling, extortion, kidnapping and trafficking in contraband such as pirated DVDs.

 

Undeterred by the 80,000 troops and federal police officers arrayed against them, gunmen frequently take on Mexican forces in the open. Operatives of one group, the Zetas, did so in northern Mexico this spring when they blockaded army garrisons. In June a group believed to be linked to another organization, La Familia, ambushed federal police in the western state of Michoacan, killing 12 officers in early morning light.

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By Haroon Siddiqui, Toronto Star

 

When you have finished laughing at Stockwell Day — for building jails for criminals he cannot find — think of the failed American regime of crime and punishment.

 

To his estimated $9 billion expenditure, add the $1 billion bill for security at the G20 summit and the $16 billion purchase of F-35s in an untendered contract.

 

Stack such expenses against Stephen Harper’s commitment to halve the $54 billion debt in five years, and wonder what he plans to slash and burn to get there.

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By: Barbara Kay, National Post

 

In one of those neat coincidences that bring a gleam to a columnist’s eye, the news cycle last month brought us Conrad Black’s release on bail from an American prison, his editor’s suggestion that he write a book about necessary reforms to the U.S. criminal justice system and as well our government’s announcement that it plans to expand the $5.1-billion dollar a year prison system to the tune of $9.5-billion a year, financing new prisons and tougher sentencing. The government’s lame justification for the expansion is the “alarming statistic” that 34% of crime goes unreported, a figure dredged up from a 2004 StatsCan report (that also found 94% of Canadians feel safe).

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Editorial, Orangeville Citizen

 

PERHAPS IT’S IN RESPONSE to the law-and-order agenda of the Harper Conservatives, and maybe it’s a sign of things to come. Whatever the case, a Supreme Court of Canada judgment released last Friday must be sending alarm bells ringing among Canadians concerned at protecting our civil liberties.

 

For years now, we’ve become accustomed to politics dominating the United States Supreme Court, a classic example being when that court voted 5- 4 to effectively put George W. Bush in office by barring recounts in Florida that would likely have given the swing state to Al Gore.

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