PRINCE OF POT'S PROSECUTOR DECLARES PROHIBITION A BUST

Law professor declares that U.S. marijuana laws endanger the public
- -- a week before Marc Emery is sentenced

Canada's prince of pot, Marc Emery, spent Labour Day in a U.S. prison
reading a newspaper column by his former prosecutor saying
anti-cannabis laws are "dangerous and wrong."

In an insult to injury that should cause Ottawa to blush, the man who
hounded Emery to face American drug and money-laundering charges
declares the pot prohibition should be ended.

John McKay, now a Seattle University law professor, argued in the
weekend article that the war against marijuana has failed, actually
threatens public safety and rests on false medical assumptions.

"I DON'T smoke pot," Seattle's former U.S. attorney insisted. "And I
pretty much think people who do are idiots."

But McKay added: "As Emery's prosecutor and a former federal
law-enforcement official, however, I'm not afraid to say out loud
what most of my former colleagues know is true: Our marijuana policy
is dangerous and wrong and should be changed through the legislative
process to better protect the public safety."

The DEA insisted in 2005 Emery was one of the world's "most wanted
international drug trafficking organizational targets." Today McKay
admits "our 1930s-era marijuana prohibition was overkill from the beginning."

What a travesty of justice!

"The hypocrisy of him being my prosecutor and still supporting my
sentencing (he doesn't condemn it) while admitting that the law is
wrong and counterproductive is unsaid -but it needs to be," Emery
complained in an e-mail from jail where he is awaiting sentencing.

"I am victimized by the law for hurting no one."

From the moment of Emery's 2005 arrest, I have said his extradition was wrong.

He openly sold seeds in Vancouver for more than a decade and no one
was willing to enforce our law -- the underhand tactic by Vancouver
cops to outsource justice to the Americans was offensive.

In response to the outcry following Emery's arrest, police did lay a
couple of other charges.

A 36-year-old Courtenay man was given a month in jail for the
identical offence. In March 2008, the Court of Appeal said that was
an appropriate punishment for selling seeds.

In Montreal, Richard Baghdadlian of Overgrow. com and Heaven's
Stairway, was also busted shortly after Emery and given a conditional
sentence of two years less a day -- that is, no jail time.

Hundreds of Canadian seed companies still sell into the U.S. market.

Emery, of course, was targeted by the DEA because he was out to end
the cannabis prohibition.

The Americans said Emery earned $5 million from his illicit catalogue
business and channelled hundreds of thousands to pro-marijuana groups.

"Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely
on," the DEA punned in its press release. How funny.

"If changing U.S. marijuana policy was ever Emery's goal, the best
that can be said is that he took the wrong path," was McKay's attempt
to put him down.

Wrong: It looks to me like Emery lost the battle and won the war.

In November, California will vote on a new legal tax-and-regulate
proposition. Similar initiatives are planned for Oregon and
Washington in 2011, and Colorado in 2012. More than a dozen states
with medical marijuana programs are following California's path.

Too bad Emery's paying a far too hefty price for his prescience --
having promoted a more sensible public policy and a more truthful
debate around cannabis -- while the intellectually dishonest gloat
that, well, okay, they are wrong and the law's an ass, but Emery
still should be punished.

I remain ashamed that Canada handed him over to the U.S. rather than
react to their concerns by prosecuting him.

On Friday Emery is to be sentenced to five years in a U.S.
penitentiary under a plea bargain. Five years! In Canada you can kill
someone and not do that kind of time.

"My incarceration costs taxpayers money they don't have to perpetuate
a policy that doesn't work in a state where the majority say they
want marijuana legal," Emery said. "So who are the idiots?"

Regrets?

"I do have regrets," he confided. "I regret that my methods of
selling seeds to Americans put me in jail and took me away from my
wife. I miss her dearly and think of her every day. I cry over it
frequently in my cell or when I speak to Jodie on the phone. But then
I have to consider what became of the $4 million I gave away to
American and Canadian activists and lobby groups."

Emery can hold his head up; it's a shame those who prosecuted him
can't do the same.