DRUG ISSUE FRONT AND CENTRE FOR EMERY

Pot Activist Makes Second Run To Be Vancouver Mayor

Marijuana activist Marc Emery, a perennial candidate in elections at all
political levels, is taking a second run at the mayor's chair.

"This is my ninth election," Emery, who represents the Vancouver Marijuana
Party and who ran for mayor in 1996, said Monday.

But the difference this time, said Emery, who was last a candidate in the
2001 provincial election, is that the issue of drugs is front and centre in
the campaign.

"I own this issue as far as the election is concerned," he said in an
interview. "The agenda's entirely my agenda this election, which is nice."

The issue of drugs is high on the campaign agenda partly because of
outgoing Mayor Philip Owen's support of the four-pillars drug treatment
policy, which is thought by many to have cost him renomination by the Civic
Non-Partisan Association. The NPA instead chose as its mayoral candidate
Jennifer Clarke, who only recently voiced support for the policy, which
consists of law enforcement, treatment, prevention and harm reduction.

"There's not a single thing in the four pillars that Mayor Owen has ever
enacted except for law enforcement," Emery said.

Emery, who has harsh words for Vancouver's police department, which he said
spends too much time on drug busts and not enough on crimes against people
and property, was critical of his three main opponents.

"Larry Campbell [of the Coalition of Progressive Electors] is an ex-cop and
Valerie MacLean [of the Vancouver Civic Action TEAM] is an ex-cop and the
NPA had hundreds of cops at its nominating meeting," he said. "None of the
other candidates has a clue about what do do about the situation.

"My ideas will work and theirs won't, so I will run again in three years if
one of them gets elected."

Emery also has some controversial ideas about what to do with the poverty
and drug problems in the Downtown Eastside, which is also a major campaign
issue.

He was jeered last week when he appeared with Campbell and MacLean at a
meeting of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association and suggested the
area be gentrified.

"I want a bulldozer taken to the Downtown Eastside," Emery, who lives in a
new building in the area, said Monday. "Level it, bulldoze it except for
five or six buildings and put up a new area for families and normal people
to come in."

Emery, who Monday described himself as the "Prince of Pot," also claimed he
has a message for the Queen, who was visiting Vancouver: "Your grandson is
not a criminal," he said, referring to Prince Harry, who was in the news
earlier this year after having used marijuana. (Harry's father, Prince
Charles, promptly ordered his then 17year-old son to visit a treatment centre.)

"While in Vancouver, the Queen should publicly demand an end to the global
war on marijuana," Emery said. "Her grandson should not have to live with
the stigma of being seen as a criminal for using marijuana, and neither
should any Canadian."