TURN ON, TUNE IN, DROP OFF

Marc Emery, founder of Vancouver's HempBC, publisher of Cannabis Culture
magazine, the man the National Post called "Canada's Pot Millionaire", has
resurfaced in cyberspace.

After having computers, pot seeds, furniture and 10 grand worth of bongs
seized in a series of raids on his Vancouver offices in 1996 and 1997, Emery
said goodbye to the material world and now has recreated himself as an
Internet entity with his own TV station: PotTV (http://www.pottv.com/).

Moored to the planet by a few small buildings on the Sunshine Coast, bobbing
safely in the international waters of the world wide web, Emery figures he's
in a key position for the final conflict in the War On Drugs. He's
Switzerland - or perhaps Tokyo Rose.

"The revolution is coming, and this time it will be televised," he says,
biting down hard on his buttered toast. We're at the Uptown Deli on
Vancouver's Homer Street, and Emery's firing facts into the air like a
drunken bandito.

"In 18 months it'll all be legal - pot, heroin, coke, ecstasy - from outlets
controlled and taxed by the government, different outlets of course, because
people buying beer might not want to see heroin on the shelf, it'll start
with medical marijuana and move down the list, because banning drugs doesn't
work, pot's been banned in Canada since 1927, no one had even smoked it yet,
but they banned it anyway-"

I beg him to slow down. "No one can take notes that fast," I say. He champs
at the bit for two sentences but when he hits the curve of the next tangent,
we're off again.

Cannabisculture.com, the site of Emery's monthly marijuana magazine, is
going strong, sometimes fielding five million hits a month. But PotTV is
still finding its feet. In the last six months the station ate up $202,000
and generated only a hundred bucks in advertising revenue. Emery shakes his
head.

"That's got to change." Knowing Emery, who started his first business
selling comic books when he was 11, it will.

Cannabis Culture brings in a million a year, Emery says, and costs a million
to run. So it breaks even, but provides global advertising for his huge
pot-seed export business (http://www.emeryseeds.com/). The seeds cost him
about a million a year and bring in a million-six. He pays $60K in income
tax to the feds, $120K to the folks who run his website, and puts the rest
into PotTV, legal defense for pot activists, a 30-worker payroll, and
personal expenses. "Which aren't much," Emery says. "I don't own anything.
The cops already took it all, two warehouses full of stuff."

PotTV is new and still gorging on cash like a baby bird, but soon the
station will have to support itself by boosting the readership of Cannabis
Culture (leading to greater seed sales) and by running ads.

"Ad revenue is a problem. Nike and The Gap don't want to be associated with
us. And people who sell bongs have never made a TV commercial before, they
have no idea how."

That rings true. But money problems aside, the website looks pretty good.
It comes off as part cable-access variety show and part Radio Free Ethiopia.
And unlike most of the web (which resembles an infinite office building with
lots of names on glass doors and no furniture or people), when it comes to
actual content, PotTV offers the full meal deal.

For hors d'oevres you can listen to the "Burning Shiva Hour", wherein Chris
Bennett rambles on hilariously about marijuana and the Bible (even though it
doesn't seem like the Old Testament drug of choice: picture Moses torn
between paranoia and munchies as he forbids the Israelites to gather manna
on the Sabbath). On "Shake And Bake", Ci Ci the tap-dancing chef will teach
you how to make pot pizza (dairy or vegan). "The Compassion Club"
broadcasts updates on the fight for legalizing medical marijuana. But the
entree is lamb, in the form of Renee Boje, a delightful 31-year-old ganja
waif who's about to be served up to the United States on a platter by our
federal justice department.

The perils of Renee began when she met Todd McCormick, whose lifelong
acquaintance with cancer has made him an expert on medical uses of
marijuana.

In 1997 Boje was busted at McCormick's California mansion, which doubled as
a cannabis resource centre, filled with books, videos, websites, magazines
and (unfortunately for her) thousands of marijuana plants. Her lawyer told
her she faced 10-to-life under federal mandatory-minimum sentencing laws,
and if she was his daughter, he'd pack her off to the Great White North.
Typically American, she actually agonized between life on the Sunshine Coast
and a decade of gang rape in the only prison system in the First World that
turns a profit. Sanity prevailed, and she ended up at PotTV, where she does
a live show every Monday at 7 p.m. called the "Herbal Healing Hour". But the
California D.A. wants her back, and the world is watching to see which side
of the 49th wears the pants.

Now Boje has become another flashpoint in the billion-dollar War on Drugs,
and as with any war it's hard to tell who's using who.Gorgeous, guileless
and slightly buzzed, she's the perfect PotTV poster girl, and everyone from
Noam Chomsky to Woody Harrelson has written letters in her defense. As a
tool of the establishment, she's a living example of how reefer madness can
suck the girl-next-door into a maelstrom of cops, lawyers and
strip-searching prison guards.

Emery has kicked in $10,000 for her legal bills."He's been great," she tells
me over the phone, "a hundred percent supportive." There's also a benefit
concert for her scheduled for December 1st at Vancouver's Plaza of Nations -
which is good, because if she goes to trial she'll need a cool
quarter-million, and twice that if her case goes to the Supreme Court.
That's a lot of hemp seed treats.

There are other departments on PotTV, plus a chat room, archives, and radio
shows. The site is also plagued with the usual web demons: too many static
images masquerading as video feed, an e-mail program that bounces your
letters back at you faster than Anna Kournikova, and the ubiquitous drone of
the 60 Hz bagpipe player who haunts all inexpensive audio equipment. But the
biggest downfall is that it's not funny enough. The only good chuckle comes
at the end of Boje's pitch for why she should stay in Canada: the text
announces, bold as brass, "Remember, there is a quarter-ounce of pot for
every $25 donation."

These problems with PotTV will eventually be patched up, Emery assures me.
Revenue is a bigger worry. But he doesn't really care whether or not the
station ever turns a profit. "The ultimate goal of PotTV is to proselytize,
to make people into zealots. Get pot legalized."

But, I ask, won't that slash funding for thousands of alternative
lifestyles - including his own? "No," Emery replies, "I'll make less money
from seeds, and more from lifestyle products and advertising. Once it's
legal, people will be able to smoke more than they do right now."

I'm skeptical. Canadians smoking more pot - is that humanly possible?