MARIJUANA GROW OPS JUST ANOTHER 'INDUSTRY' TO PRINCE OF POT

Saddled with an economy that's as much about scrambling to hold onto
the jobs we've got as trying to create new ones, eastern Ontario has
chased many ventures over the years to find that magic economic bullet.

Fantasia, anyone?

But it turns out there's been a possible economic salvation under our
noses all along: marijuana.

Weed has been on my mind for much of this week.

And before my bosses - and Brockville police - get too excited, let
me be clear that it's been more than two decades since I actually
crossed paths with pot.

Honest, guys.

No, it's not a sudden hankering for a joint that has me thinking
about the bud and its role in an economy that lurks under the radar.
Instead it was an interview with one of Canada's foremost marijuana activists.

Marc Emery, B.C.-based publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine and
self-proclaimed prince of pot, is definitely a media darling.

Spend some time on the phone with him and you'll find out why. He's a
reporter's dream with his in-your-face attitude to authority and
ability to fire off one great quote after another.

I spoke to Emery to provide the other side of the marijuana debate to
an article about the OPP's preparations to ramp up their outdoor
marijuana eradication efforts.

Emery didn't disappoint.

Rather than the folks in the white hats, Emery portrayed the police
and their heavy handed approach to marijuana as thorns in the side of
small-town economies.

In fact, in criticizing them, he sounds not unlike an Ontario Tory
MPP slamming Premier Dalton McGuinty for hurting the economy in this
neck of the woods.

"These grows provide billions of dollars to people in rural Canada
and that money is essential in many small towns across Quebec,
Ontario and British Columbia," Emery opines.

How much?

Try $7 billion, which is what he says Canada's "marijuana industry"
generates every year.

To Emery, the typical pot grower is just an average Joe Canuck trying
to make a buck in hard times.

"There's half a million Canadians in the marijuana industry," said
Emery, adding, "Do we have half a million members of organized crime
in Canada and all in the marijuana industry? I don't think so.

"These are all ordinary Canadians."

He spins a great story, but I'm not fully buying what he's selling.

Two local busts by police this week in which police seized harder
drugs like meth along with weapons and stolen property would suggest
Emery's romanticizing the portrait of pot production quite a bit.

You're not going to convince him it's anything more than another
"industry," though.

In fact, he says it's the "perfect" Canadian product, made better by
the fact growers are largely environmentally friendly: their only
emission is the smoke puffed out by happy customers.

"All you need is some dirt, water, some seeds and human labour and
you can produce out of nothing billions of dollars that (land) didn't
produce before," said Emery.

Of course, those billions in revenue only exist because the
government continues to make marijuana illegal.

Legalize it and the "risk money" pot smokers are now paying to toke
up vanishes as the bottom drops out of the market.

Emery knows this. He estimates the street value of weed would drop by
as much as five times if the stuff were legalized - although you
better believe government taxes would keep the price, ahem, high.

So much then for any hopes of turning those now illegal grow ops that
dot the eastern Ontario landscape into money-makers.

One question though. If it makes so much economic good sense and if
pot growers really are as harmless as any other cash cropper, why
then is the stuff still illegal?

"Because government doesn't make sense," countered Emery.

Then he really ratchets up the us-against-the-man rhetoric, telling
me, "Government is the monopoly of control over the people and
whenever people want liberty it has to be taken pretty well by force
or near force from the government itself."

And even if people can someday enjoy a doobie without fear of
prosecution, Emery is quick to point out activists like him will
never be out of business.

"It doesn't matter because the day we legalize marijuana, somebody's
going to want to make it illegal again."