POT PROPHET PREACHES TO HIS PEOPLE

Marc Emery identified pot smokers as a "people" and compared
the prohibition of marijuana with discrimination against Jewish and
Chinese people in a March 12 speech at UVic.

Nicknamed the Prince of Pot, Emery is one of North America's leading
marijuana activists, the publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine and
the leader of the B.C. Marijuana Party.

"A lot of people ask me, 'When do you think we're going to legalize
pot?' And I'm thinking, never get complacent like that, because the
second we legalize pot, some crazy bastard is going to try and make it
criminal the next moment," Emery told the crowd of around 50 people.

"There is always going to be a group of people that doesn't like the
pot people. And there's an important reason for that - it's because we
are responsible for everything good in the world.

"I have learned that the better you are, the more superior you are to
other people, the more other people will hate you as a consequence.
Jewish people know about this, and Chinese people know about this. The
Jewish groups in the world who are the best at money have the most
people hating them. They are hated for their competence. They are
hated for their ethical abilities with those things," he said.

"There are people who are persecuted in the world, but no one is more
persecuted around the world than the cannabis people. Over one quarter
of a million people are in jail at any given time for cannabis - at
least 70,000 in the United States out of that quarter million."

Emery, 50, came to Victoria with his wife to speak to UVic's Hempology
101 club. The group meets weekly to hear half-hour lectures about
cannabis, before smoking joints at 4:20 p.m. by the Petch Fountain at
the heart of campus.

Emery told the gathering that potheads are superior to others and
cannabis has influenced most musicians, movies and computer software.

"After us, there's just assholes," he said. "The people who don't
smoke pot are not as good as us. That's why we're hated."

Emery also contrasted people who smoke marijuana with homeless
people.

"If we were really drug addicted fools that were worth society's
contempt, nobody would care about us. Look at all the homeless people
in your town - nobody gives a shit about them. If we were them, nobody
would pay attention to us if we smoked pot," Emery said.

"But we're not them - we're the creators and producers of everything
that's great in our society today. Without us, the world would fall
apart so fucking fast. I'm not kidding you."

Emery is facing extradition to the United States for selling marijuana
seeds over the Internet to U.S. buyers. He has been trying to strike a
plea bargain that would allow him to serve prison time in Canada.
Canadian authorities, however, are not willing to honour the bargain.

The prison time he faces in the U.S., up to life imprisonment, is
longer than what is allowed under Canadian law.

Emery also said that much of the money he made from selling the seeds
was donated to a number of drug-related causes, including advocacy
projects, class action lawsuits challenging marijuana prohibition, a
drug addiction clinic, and the Marijuana Policy Project.

"People would send me millions of dollars for all these seeds - in
fact, they'd send me $15 million over the space of 10 years - and
after I'd paid all the seed people and everything else, there was $4.1
million we gave away," said Emery.

"They call me the number-one drug trafficking kingpin in all of Canada
- - bigger than Triad and the Chinese gangs - bigger than everybody," he
said.

"They're saying I'm responsible for 1.1 million pounds of weed, which
is worth about $3 billion, of which I would be very proud to say, if
it's true, I am glad it's happened. Nobody in their life can say, 'I
brought $3 billion worth of wealth to my people.' "

Emery, a bookshop owner, started his marijuana advocacy work in 1989
after he discovered The Emperor Wears No Clothes, a book about
marijuana, was banned in Canada.

So Emery started flouting the law and selling books about pot
anyways.

"I [couldn't] get charged for the life of me, because basically they
were saying, 'Listen, if we charge you, you'll probably overturn the
law, because the law would say it's outrageous that true information
could be banned," he said.

"[Governments] value your telling of the truth more highly than
actually possessing the drug itself."

The law prohibiting information about marijuana was overturned in
1995.

As for the benefits of marijuana, Emery said pot can cure lung cancer,
help prevent relapses of drug addictions and prevent
Alzheimer's.

"Our bodies evolved over millions of years, and it actually evolved
with a cannabinoid receptor whose only function is to seek out
cannabis in your system and process it and use it," he said.

"Once you get around 50 or 55, the cannabinoid receptor in your brain
withers away without use. If you don't feed your cannabinoid
receptors, you will get Alzheimer's disease. You will get memory loss.

"THC kills cancer right away. Injected right into the cells, it kills
them dead," he added. "It cleans out all the tissues around your lungs
and takes it out of your body. You won't get cancer of the lungs and
respiratory system if you just smoke pot."

Emery, who has been jailed 17 times, in every province except Quebec
and Prince Edward Island, could be spending the rest of his life in
prison if U.S. prosecutors are successful.

"I'm going to be facing something like 30 years minimum," he said.