WE'RE BEING UNFAIRLY 'DEMONIZED,' SAY B.C. POT ADVOCATES

Emery Irked by 'Slanders' Against Growers

B.C. pot advocates say they're being unfairly vilified by the furore
surrounding the killings of four Mounties on an Alberta farm.

Pot patron Marc Emery and Kirk Tousaw of the B.C. Marijuana Party said
the fact that the killer had a grow-op is no reason to label all
growers as police-hating, violent lunatics who must be censured at
every step.

"I'm shocked at how the marijuana community has been slandered by a
guy who is clearly mentally unhinged and grew up with guns his whole
life and in a Christian fundamentalist home," Emery said. "They
mysteriously find 20 plants and now there is a pogrom against the
growers across Canada.

"The bodies of these officers aren't even cold and they are being used
as a flashpoint to cause a lot of harsh conditions for what ends up
being hundreds of thousands of Canadians like me who grow pot and
smoke it. Now we are being demonized.

"We will be paying for this for months and years ahead in tougher
legislation and more abusive behaviour by police officers toward us
and less access to politicians to explain to them that ending
prohibition could end all these problems."

Tousaw said the "tragic killings" should prompt a re-evaluation of
Canada's policy of drug prohibition.

"History is devoid of any examples of successful drug or alcohol
prohibitions," said Tousaw. "And in the case of marijuana grow
operations, a crackdown will mean that non-violent growers are pushed
out of the industry to be replaced by those more inclined to violence
and organized criminal activity."

In Ottawa, RCMP commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli said yesterday he
was too quick to condemn the pot grow-op as the root cause of the
murders, just hours after the shootings. "I gave what I believed was
the best information I had knowing full well that at that time I
didn't have all the information," Zaccardelli said. "Clearly, there's
a lot of things in there that, in hindsight, we will have to look at
in a different perspective."

Police in Mayerthorpe, Alta., first attended James Roszko's home last
Wednesday with a court order to seize stolen auto parts. While there,
they discovered what a search warrant said were 20 pot plants. They
returned the next day -- the day of the killings -- with a warrant to
search for drugs and seized 280 plants, $8,000 worth of growing
equipment and a generator worth $30,000.