THE IRONY OF THE PRINCE OF POT

Supporters of Marc Emery may be outraged that the so-called Prince of
Pot faces imminent extradition to the U.S., but you've got to wonder
if Emery isn't secretly pleased.

The Vancouver-based pro-marijuana activist deliberately poked Uncle
Sam in the eye by selling marijuana seeds over the Internet -
practically daring the U.S. authorities to go after him.

They did and Emery could be behind bars in the U.S. within days, now
that Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has given the green light for his
extradition.

"I'm proud of what I've done and I have no regrets," Emery told
reporters Monday before surrendering to sheriffs in Vancouver.

This doesn't sound like a man who's particularly unhappy about the way
things turned out. Emery's been yearning to be a martyr for the cause
for years and it looks like he'll finally get his wish.

Compared to Americans nabbed in drug cases, he's pretty lucky. The
Prince of Pot faces a mere five years in jail in exchange for pleading
guilty. Americans involved in such drug-related endeavours can spend
decades in jail.

The great irony is that Canadian authorities have known about Emery's
seed-selling business for a long time and have, for the most part,
ignored it.

Emery has sent marijuana seeds to MPs, paid hundreds of thousands of
dollars in taxes and has generally been as in-your-face as possible
about pressing for the legalization of pot.

"I wish I could have done more to piss the U.S. government off," he
said in 2008.

Even though Emery brought this on his own head, it's worth noting that
Nicholson is shipping the Prince of Pot off to the U.S. for behaviour
that Canada didn't seem bothered about.

Health Canada even recommended that medical pot patients contact Emery
for a source of supply, says Eugene Oscapella, of the Canadian
Foundation for Drug Policy.

"It's hardly a surprise with this government," Oscapella says of
Emery's pending extradition. "Am I shocked? No. Am I appalled? Yes."

Canada won't be paying the bill to incarcerate Emery, mind you, unless
he's eventually transferred back to a Canadian jail.

The bad news is Canadian taxpayers will be paying a lot more to
incarcerate people if the Conservatives' latest attempt to bring in
mandatory sentences for various drug crimes passes.

People growing as few as six pot plants, for instance, face at least
six months in jail - or a minimum of nine months in jail if they're
tenants.

"Are you going to get the major traffickers? No," says Oscapella, who
teaches a criminology course on drug policy at the University of Ottawa.

Every year, he surveys his students about drug use and 85% of the
students in his last class reported having used illegal drugs.

"So our government has decided that it wants to continue to
criminalize 85% of the population of university students I teach,"
says Oscapella.

"These are the privileged in society so they're not going to be the
kids picked up in the drug sweeps if they're on campus," he adds.

"But if they're in the wrong place at the wrong time or their skin's
the wrong colour, they're going to get picked up and we're going to
add billions to the cost of incarceration."

Watch more of your taxes go to the unwinnable war on drugs while
traffickers get wealthier.

Meanwhile, California, America's most populous state, is poised for a
fall vote on whether to legalize the adult use and cultivation of pot.

That should create quite a buzz.