HE INHALED. THE QUESTION IS, DID HE EVER EXHALE?

Marc Emery Says Marijuana Makes Him More Likeable

During the break, Marc Emery asks if I want his autograph. "Uh, no, that's
OK," I respond. "Who are you?"

Emery looks at me like I'm stoned. I look at him like he's stoned. The
difference is, Emery really is stoned. I just had that "I'm stoned" look on
my face, which happens to me sometimes.

Emery, one of the speakers at ideaCity, is the former owner of the Cannabis
Cafe in Vancouver. He's been arrested 10 times, raided four times, and
jailed eight times in his pursuit to legalize marijuana. He's the founder
and president of the B.C. Marijuana Party (they received 53,000 votes in
the last election), the editor of Cannabis Culture magazine, and he sells
350 varieties of marijuana seeds from his Web site, www.emeryseeds.com.

And he's here, at ideaCity! When Moses Znaimer, who heads the three-day
gathering, says ideaCity is about "having our imagination stretched," I
guess he really means it. Znaimer goes on to say in our programs that "our
evening parties will stimulate all your senses and ensure you have a really
good time." Maybe this is why Emery was invited.

At the opening night fete, at the Design Exchange in Toronto, Emery says he
passed around 15 joints and smoked openly. "Seven presenters smoked with me
... which I think is really neat."

Emery, who speaks this afternoon (criminal lawyer Edward Greenspan follows)
says he brought five ounces of weed to the conference. "I thought people
would expect me to bring it."

He smokes about 11 joints a day. He smoked up yesterday at lunch hour (with
attendees), the day before at a break (again with attendees). "It really
energized me," he says. "Plus, I'm more likeable when I'm stoned. I'm more
considerate. I'm nicer to women."

He's stoned as we speak. But, he says, he refuses to smoke up before his talk.

"Well, that seems a little odd," I say. "Why not?"

"When you're high, your sense of time and place is pleasantly distorted.
But I'm only allowed to talk for 15 minutes. I need to be precise. If I got
high, I'd ramble on for 45 minutes."

He's pleased as punch -- yes, I'm perfectly sober, and still wrote that
description -- that he was invited to speak alongside scientists, CEOs,
neurosurgeons and architects. "I do a lot of speeches, but no one has
offered to pay for my airfare anywhere," he says. "This makes me feel worthy."

Yesterday, he says he shared a joint at lunch hour with two other
presenters. "They all act like they're doing something a little rebellious.
At the party, some of them had to present today, and they were worried they
would be too messed up. I just said, 'You tell Moses it's all my fault if
you screw up.' "

Stereotypes of hemp users are just that, he says when I tell him I'm
"shocked and dismayed" that self-professed brainiacs would partake in such
illegal activity.

"I know hippies who don't smoke drugs. Most of the people who come to me
for a toke here are between the ages of 38 and 55."

He says he rakes in about $14-million a year in sales from his Web orders.
"But all that goes back into my business. By about noon each day, I make
$15,000 in sales."

He says his four children, now in their twenties, never smoked drugs. "I
even used to keep a big bowl of it in the fridge. But they thought, 'If my
Dad did it, then it couldn't be cool.' "

Emery, who has an executive assistant who travels with him (she gets paid
$700 a week; pot is a perk of the job) holds on to the dope for him. She
keeps it in a smell-proof tin.

"Would you like a joint to take home?" Emery offers. I decline.

"A joint should've been in the gift bag they gave out," he says, "instead
of the hotel-sized bottles of Aveda hair conditioner."