THE PRINCESS OF POT

With her husband Marc in jail, Jodie Emery, a Green Party candidate
in the next federal election, will inherit his cannabis empire

During the months while he awaited news of his extradition to the
United States, parades of well-wishers regularly marched through Marc
Emery's Cannabis Culture Headquarters in Vancouver. They wound their
way to the modest office at the rear of the Hastings Street store, in
search of the infamous crusader for the legalization of marijuana.
Marc greeted them all, and offered most a trophy: a photo of
themselves doing a bong hit with the Prince of Pot. He would produce
an oosik-sized instrument, pack it with potent BC bud, and
orchestrate the snapshot with a practised patter: inhale, smile, shoot!

Exhale. And then Marc's fans would stagger away, all grins and
giggles, to spend the next twenty minutes wandering about the store.
Marc would grin, too, as he watched his blissfully dazed guests queue
up to purchase Free Marc T-shirts and other pothead tchotchkes. On
the day I visited his Gastown emporium, he put away the oosik, tossed
off that ironic smile that has become his trademark, and deadpanned,
"I do twenty to fifty of those a day."

Jodie, the lithe twenty-five-year-old working at the next desk,
smiled but did not look up from her computer, where she was emailing
organizers of the international Free Marc effort. In addition to
campaigning for his release and managing his businesses, Jodie is Marc's wife.

"Marc has always done things differently. He's always had a unique
type of success," she says of her husband, who has been honing the
smoky art of blending business with activism since 1975, when he
dropped out of high school to buy a used bookstore in London,
Ontario. Thirty years later, he was mak-ing millions of dollars
selling marijuana seeds via mail order. "I've learned how he does it,
by watching, by observing. And I've added to it what I think I know
how to do well. I think I appeal to ordinary people."

Jodie started working for Marc six years ago. A sultry
nineteen-year-old with a passion for pearl necklaces and high heels,
she stood out among the usual female admirers who fleshed out his
following and frequented his bed. She was, and still is, like a Mad
Men character who has wandered into an episode of Weeds. Marc, who
describes himself as "a serial monogamist who's never been
monogamous," was smitten. He anointed Jodie his protege, and romance
soon bloomed.

Their courtship was marked by a series of crises that brought them
closer together. During the summer of 2004, Marc served sixty-one
days in a Saskatoon jail. He called Jodie each day to dictate his
journal; she transcribed his words for publication. "There was a lot
of connecting," she tells me later that day, pressed against her
husband in a restaurant just down the street from HQ.

And on July 29, 2005, Canadian authorities raided Marc's seed selling
operation at the behest of the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Marc and two long-time employees were arrested. All three were
charged in the US with conspiracy to produce and traffic in marijuana
and to launder the proceeds, and faced long US sentences. Jodie
remembers Marc's next phone call vividly. "He called me from jail. He
said, 'I'm going to move in with you when I get out. And we're going
to get married at some point.' " That was the proposal. They were wed
in the summer of 2006. He was forty-eight, indicted, divorced, and
father to four adopted children older than Jodie. She was twenty-one
and had never been in a relationship with anyone else.

Jodie describes Marc as nothing less than the man who saved her. Her
father took his life when she was nine, and by the time she showed up
on Marc's doorstep she had kicked a cocaine habit but was still
taking antidepressants. "I had nothing going on in my life," she
acknowledges. "It was a bad choice." Today she is a vegetarian and a
teetotaler - albeit one who smokes a lot of pot. "Some people call
Marc a criminal," she says. "I say, no, he's a hero. That's why I
love him. That's why I'll always be just his wife, no matter what
happens to him."

Marc describes Jodie as both the lover who cured him of his
philandering ways, and the kindred spirit who will carry on his work.
In the fall of 2009, he pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to
manufacture marijuana after charges were dropped against his
employees. As this magazine went to press, he expected to serve up to
five years in a US federal prison. He has transferred control of his
businesses to Jodie, effectively handing her the tough job of running
a conglomerate hobbled by the loss of the lucrative seed selling business.

At the same time, Jodie is trying to launch a career in politics. She
has already run in three provincial campaigns: as a candidate for
Marc's BC Marijuana Party in the 2005 general election and a 2008
by-election, and again for the Green Party of BC in 2009. After a
tentative initiation, she became a star candidate for the provincial
Greens, turning heads for both her pothead-in-pearls appearance and
her articulate arguments. She's slated to run for the federal Green
Party in the next election.

Jodie shares her husband's libertarian world view - "I'm very much
against government, especially after reading Atlas Shrugged " - but
while Marc's dozens of quixotic political campaigns have served
primarily to promote his legalization crusade (and his businesses),
Jodie wants to win: "I want to get somewhere in politics."

Marc finds hope in her ambition and comfort in her devotion. "What do
you think is the number one reason that men try to escape from jail?
" he asks. "It's because they think their girlfriend is fooling
around. They go back to the girlfriend's place to confront her. And
the cops will be waiting there." Marc smiles at Jodie and adds, "I've
got nothing to worry about." Jodie leans into him, puts her head on
his shoulder, and sighs.

"I'll be defining who I am a lot more," she says. "People will be
able to see me for who I am instead of just as Marc's wife. You know,
to a lot of people I'm just a giggling, happy girl."