SEEDS OF REBEL'S U.S. POT FIGHT GREW IN CANADA

To anyone who has followed the principled opposition of London, Ont.
native Marc Emery to everything from a ban on Sunday shopping and
potty mouthed rap videos to draconian laws against marijuana
possession, his current status as drug martyr facing a possible life
sentence in a dank U.S. prison can hardly come as a surprise.

I still remember Emery as the loquacious proprietor of the downtown
indie book store, City Lights, during my mid-'80s tenure as a student
at the University of Western Ontario.

As pop culture geeks like myself skipped classes to dig through
treasure troves of vintage vinyl, the bespectacled rebel -- a few
years older than us -- would stand behind the counter debating in
intense but measured terms the unique brand of Libertarian social
philosophy lifted almost intact from the dozens of Ayn Rand novels
festooned around his store.

Individual freedom and capitalism were key, he argued with an air of
tweedy intelligence, and government should commit itself to defending
individual freedoms -- not restricting them.

I don't know if I ever had an actual conversation with him -- he was
anything but pushy -- but as I dug through racks of scuffed up 45s
and beat-up novels, I remember being impressed by the loyalty he
commanded from the dozens of local characters who stopped by to chat
and, not infrequently, challenge his opinions.

Twenty five years later, we learn in the tenaciously insightful TV
doc The Prince of Pot: The U.S. Vs. Marc Emery (10 p.m. on CBC
Newsworld), the provocative upstart has taken his fight for freedom
to the next level and, if he loses his high stakes showdown with the
U.S. government, it may well be his last.

"Finally, now I've got the big David and Goliath battle I've always
been seeking!" notes the unrepentant iconoclast, relocated to
Vancouver in the '90s.

"I must have been goading them subconsciously all along to do this --
go ahead, I dare ya!"

The current faceoff -- with a possible life sentence hanging in the
balance -- is over the mail order marijuana seeds the 49-year-old
maverick has been illegally distributing over the Internet since '95
while U.S. authorities twisted themselves in knots of rage.

"You don't put a stick in Superman's eye," advises Sen. Larry
Campbell, a former Vancouver mayor turned Emery sympathizer who
describes the current U.S. drug czar as "a complete and total idiot."
"They're not gonna execute him but 'life' would be pretty brutal.
They'll bury him so deep they'll be sending him sunshine in a tin can!"

It doesn't faze Emery or his legion of activist supporters, who
openly taunt U.S. officials and argue that a soft drug like marijuana
- -- which until recently, was on the verge of legalization in Canada
- -- should be classed differently than addictive hard drugs like
cocaine and heroin.

"People are unjustly being put in prison and having their lives
destroyed for choosing a substance that's somewhere between coffee
and beer!" decries Emery accomplice Greg Williams.

No matter. U.S. officials -- like John Wayne facing down a gang of
cattle rustlers -- are taciturn, severe and dogged in their quest for
vengeance.

Drugs are drugs, they insist, and rigorously intellectual Emery has
been classified -- along with hard drug hellions like the Hells
Angels -- as one of the world's top 46 worst drug traffickers (he's
No. 1 in Canada).

"I am never going to retreat," vows the unruffled pariah. "Each
culture has to have it heroes willing to give their lives for that
movement and dying might be inevitable."

Ironic pause: "And if I don't die in jail, I'm gonna come back to
triumph and they're gonna elect me justice minister and then I'll
make pot legal and it'll be a fairytale ending!"

Older, paunchier than I remember but with the same feisty, idealistic
spirit, Emery looks at the camera and smiles.

He may be going down, but it won't be without a fight.