POT PRINCE'S IDEOLOGY GOT HIM IN HOT WATER

It is a bit nuts.

Vancouver is now home to a government-funded supervised-injection site
for hard-drug users. Most cops won't bust you for joints. Travel
agencies hype Hastings Street's pot cafes, and British Columbia's
reputation for exotic, high-test marijuana varieties is already a
stale cliche.

Only three years ago, Canada's prime minister was Jean Chretien, who
joked that he was looking forward to retirement but wanted more lax
marijuana laws before he stepped down: "I will have my money for my
fine, and a joint in the other hand."

Now Vancouver's Marc Emery, the Marijuana party leader and
international drug-law-reform advocate, is facing extradition to the
United States with two of his associates, facing the possibility of a
life sentence without parole for doing more or less exactly what he
has been doing here, openly, for a decade. Selling seeds.

Odder still is that despite Emery's 22 marijuana-related convictions,
he's never been busted for selling so much as an ounce of marijuana.
He's never spent more than a few months in jail in Canada, even though
he built his mail-order marijuana-seed business, which includes
Cannabis Culture magazine, into a $5-million-a-year enterprise. He
regularly files his tax returns. The government takes his money.

So how is it possible that Canada's Prince of Pot may soon come to
such an ignominious end, with his partners, Michelle Rainey-Fenkarek
and Greg Williams, going down with him?

"Obviously, because I'm arrogant, I'm mouthy, and I've spent $4
million trying to get rid of the DEA [the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Admin-istration] and the drug laws," Emery told me over the phone
the other day. Emery says he's plowed back all of his profits into a
crusade against drug laws all over the world: legal challenges,
protests, lobbying efforts, and U.S. ballot initiatives. The U.S.
attorney general says Emery's outfit had become one of the world's top
drug-trafficking rings.

But that's not even half the story.

Emery and his many supporters see something awfully sinister at work
here: a foul American violation of Canadian sovereignty, and a supine
Canadian government letting it happen.

Vancouver East New Democratic Party MP Libby Davies says Vancouver
cops were engaged in the extradition case as foot soldiers in the U.S.
war on drugs: "It feels to me like the long arm of U.S. enforcement
reaching into Canada."

The nationalist Council of Canadians says the extradition proceedings
"raise serious questions about Canada's sovereignty over law
enforcement". The Canadian Action Party says the case goes to "the
core of being Canadian, being a sovereign nation, being able to make
decisions we choose in our interest, in our own time, on our own terms".

That's what you'll hear from voices as disparate as Vancouver Sun
columnist Ian Mulgrew ("an outrageous infringement of Canadian
sovereignty") and the Communist party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)
("No to the Extradition of B.C. Marijuana Party Officials! Annexation
No! Sovereignty Yes!").

The problem is the argument just doesn't hold water.

Because seed-selling isn't treated as a crime in Canada, Emery and his
associates shouldn't be sent to face charges in the States, the
argument goes. But selling marijuana seeds is illegal in Canada, and
although Canadian police agencies haven't bothered to prosecute many
mail-order seed businesses--judges tend to roll their eyes when any
marijuana bust comes before them--prosecutions still occur.

And it's not just that Stephen Harper's recently arrived
pothead-averse Conservatives are kowtowing to the White House. It was
the internationally acclaimed human-rights jurist Irwin Cotler,
justice minister in Paul Martin's Liberal government, who gave the
green light to the extradition application. (Never one to be delicate,
Emery wrote in an on-line jail diary "I hate Cotler," and went on to
describe Cotler, a Jew, as a "Jewish-Nazi, or Nazi-Jew".)

It's also that Americans and Canadians are extradited back and forth
across the border all the time. Canadian stock-scam artists and
telemarketing fraudsters are routinely trundled off to the U.S. to
face charges for crimes committed in Canada, and vice versa. As it
happens, most of Emery's mail-order-seed traffic was America-bound.
The DEA reckons that Emery's seeds were sufficient to grow $2.5
billion worth of pot down there. So they want him.

But that's still not even half the story of why Emery is in this
predicament.

It's what he calls his "ideology". It's his destiny. "My mentor is Ayn
Rand," Emery said, referring to the American antistate prophet of
selfishness beloved of right-wing libertarians.

Long before Emery got into the marijuana business, he already had a
history of civil disobedience as a bookshop proprietor in London,
Ontario, in protests against Sunday shopping bans, obscenity laws, and
even street-sign bylaws. During our conversation, Emery reiterated his
view that Canada's universal-health-care system should be scrapped and
that public schools should be abolished in favour of a voucher system
allowing parents a free choice of private tutors for their children.
And no public funds should be spent on medical care for anyone over
the age of 70, either.

But of all the state's corrupting intrusions, Emery said, none is more
wicked than the drug laws.

"I'm getting exactly what I want. It's all good. It's exactly what I
want," Emery said. "This is an epic struggle between good and evil.
You couldn't pick a more virtuous person to go up against evil. I've
been waiting for this all of my life."

The extradition hearings are set for May. Unless a judge finds some
reason not to extradite Emery and his friends, the case will go to
Canada's new justice minister, Robert Nicholson. He could seek
American assurances of sentencing leniency. But that's about it.

"If they can send me away," Emery said, "they can send anyone
away."

Indeed.