LIBERTARIANS AND RIGHT-WINGERS EMBRACE NEW MARIJUANA PARTY

"We Are Closer To Alliance Than Green"

When you enter the Victory Square office that runs the $225,000 campaign of
the B.C.. marijuana Party of B.C. it's not the pungent whiff of pot that
surprises you.

Or the reggae song in the background; the one with the Rasta inflection of
the glories of the herb.

It's the conservative or right wing political beliefs of many of the
activists in the pro-pot party. Call it reefer madness, but at times you
could swear you've stumbled on to a study group devoted to right-wing
philosophist Ayn Rand.

Marijuana legalization is an issue generally advocated by the liberal/left
intelligentsia. And pro marijuana rallies have the radical youth look of
your basic demonstration for peace or against the World Trade Organization.

But socialism is mostly a dirty word amongst most Marijuana Party officials.

To be sure, there is among the Marijuana Party hardcore the odd anarchist
with affinity to left-wing media critic Noam Chomsky and to George Orwell.

But the Marijuana Party - if it can be place on the political spectrum - is
right of centre. In some ways right of the B.C. Liberal Party or its two
federal cousins, the federal Liberals and the Canadian Alliance. Indeed,
the Marijuana party platform opposes several notions cherished by Canada's
liberal/left: medicare, public schools, and gun laws.

" The Marijuana Party may be the only genuine free-enterprise party left in
B.C.", said political analyst and historian David Mitchell.

this is why even some Alliance activists are joining the Marijuana Party
campaign, including Mathew Johnston, the political aide who impersonated
Edmonton MP Rahim Jaffer on CKNW radio, landing the rising star of
conservative politics in political hot water.

Johnston, 30, is a partner in the Calgary based Johnston Mckinley Strategy
Group, a firm who's business motto is "whatever it takes". He is here
because of his ideological kinship with Marc Emery, the wealthy pot
entrepaneur who is bankrolling the Marijuana with $170,000 of his own money.

Johnston, a former campaign manager for Stockwell Day, met Emery in London,
Ont. last year at a conference of the International Society for Individual
Liberty. The meeting drew champions of the minimalist government from
around the world. And after the conference many of the delegates went to
Toronto for a tour of business centers and film locals from a TV movie on
their heroine, novelist Ayn Rand.

The relationship between emery and Johnston stems from the growing support
among economic conservatives - as opposed to social conservatives for the
legalization of marijuana. Johnston organized a conference on drug laws in
Edmonton last year where both Emery and a speaker from the Fraser Institute
argued against current drug laws.

Johnston is working full time for the Marijuana Party, setting up their
telecommunications center. The party hopes to have 16 phone lines at its
Hasting st. Office next week, sending telemarketing messages to up to 8000
homes every day during the election.

( The party also plans to have a phone bank, said Emery, where volunteers
will be offered pot. " That was one of our inducements - we give them weed
while they work".)

" I define myself as a Libertarian as do many members of the Alliance".,
Johnston said.

" And so we see the war on drugs as a flagship issue. One that best
illustrates the potential harm that can result from intrusive government,"

this is certainly the view of Emery, the cannabis capitalist and former
operator of Hemp B.C., who distributes marijuana seeds and produces the
internet - based Pot-TV.

Emery is the de facto Marijuana Party leader and candidate in Vancouver
Burrard. He is a former candidate and funder of the B.C. Libertarian Party,
which believes governments should end much of their taxation and stop
interfering in peoples lives, by for example, prohibiting marijuana use.

Emery says former NDP supporters are among the "ground troops" for the
Marijuana Party, but that his party's appeal is really to those in the
political center or right wing. Disenchanted NDP supporters are more likely
to vote Green than vote for his party, he added.

" We are closer to the Alliance insofar that they generally pay lip service
to saying that the state should be kept at bay"

Emery acknowledged that their is a public perception that marijuana
activists are hippiesque young people. the reality, he says, is that most
pot smokers are between 35 and 55 and hold down jobs.

The Marijuana Party platform calls for radical changes to the education
system, including school vouchers allowing parents to send their kids to
any school of their choosing.

Emery says there will be a "continuation of bullying and the threat of
strikes" if most education is controlled by the B.C. Teachers Federation.

Emery said the "government monopoly is pretty bad education" and that the
BCTF is" one of the elites that we have to pay homage to and it shouldn't
be that way."

Emery is also a strong advocate of privatized health care. "We are in
favour of anything that offers more choices. We should make accommodation
possible so that people with extra income can buy extra services.
Socialized medicine will always lead to crisis."

Political analyst Mitchell said that the popular radical image of the
marijuana scene clashes with the Marijuana Party's core beliefs.

"Some aging hippies might be tempted to vote for the Marijuana Party, but
would only do so if they had not examined it's platform."

Harvey Mckinnon, a political and social marketing consultant, said that "
it's ironic that some traditional NDP supporters may decide to vote for the
Marijuana Party without knowing how really conservative it rally is." He
then quipped :"If you ever talked to people in the B.C. Marijuana Party,
you can see that smoking drugs really does affect your brain."

Ideology isn't the key motivation of those working full time at the
Marijuana Party office. Michelle Rainy-Fenkarek has smoked marijuana daily
for eight years to cope with Crohn's disease. The pot eases the pain of her
nausea and allows her to live a normal life, one without prescription
pain-killers, she says. Rainy-Fenkarek, Emery's personal assistant, has had
the same supplier for many years.

She voted NDP most of her life but voted for the Marijuana Party in the
federal election.

the party's official financial agent is Rob Gillespie, a Libertarian Party
activist who runs a business consultancy, likes guns, and doesn't smoke
marijuana because it hurts his singing voice.

"I'm an Ayn Rand kind of Libertarian," Gillespie said. "I don't think it's
any of my business what other people put in their bodies and I don't think
it's the business of Jean Chretien either."

Gillespie discovered the writings of Rand in high school and has been
active in Libertarian politics ever since.

Rand's best-known novels , "Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged", presented a
moral and economic philosophy called "objectivism", based on individualism
and self-interest. About opposition to drug laws, Gillespie said " It's
just one more piece of the big Libertarian picture."

He's also a strong opponent of gun laws." Gun control is victim
disarmament. Why can't you defend yourself from home invasion?"

the Libertarian Party activist said he finds it more enjoyable working for
a party like the Marijuana Party which ahs a media buzz around it.

" The libertarians, despite the fact that they are advocating the same
things as we are, don't have the same sexy hook as the Marijuana Party
does. Nobody paid attention to the Libertarians, but they do seem to be
paying attention to us."

Among the party's candidates is Meaghan Walker Williams, a 29 year old
aboriginal woman running in Cowichan Ladysmith. She first met Emery at the
London conference on Individual Liberty. Her intellectual heroes are
conservative thinkers like William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman. "If you
read up on what they say you can see that the war on drugs is rally stupid."

The Marijuana Party found many of it's candidates by urging readers of it's
website to apply.

Alice Kan-Halford, 19, applied and became the candidate in Richmond. she
also got a job from Emery as assistant manager of the Marijuana Party of
B.C. Bookstore.

Kan-Halford describes herself as a "recreational" pot smoker and a
conservative Libertarian."

"I believe that people should be given the chance to be responsible for
themselves and not having Big-Brother leding them around,"

Pollster Daniel Savas of Ipso - Reid said marijuana legalization does not
register as an issue in B.C. and that the Marijuana party has little room
to grow.