PENALTIES FOR GROWING MARIJUANA ARE FAR TOO HARSH

How does one address a prince?

According to Webster's Dictionary, a prince is a "nobleman of varying rank
and status," and a nobleman is known to be "possessing, characterized by or
arising from superiority of mind or character or of ideals or morals."
Superior rank, mind and morals?

Now I'm really nervous.

What will I say when I phone the "Prince of Pot?" Even though it was quite
late, a very alert Marc Emery greeted me on the phone. After stumbling a
little in the face of royalty, I haltingly asked where the name "Prince of
Pot" came from. With a Gene Krupa rhythm, Marc ticked off the names Lamont,
Bernard Shaw and Impact CNN, and explained how he took them around and
showed them grow sites and Lamont nicknamed him "Prince of Pot." I figure
from the way Emery answered this question he had been asked it a thousand
times.

Emery became the focus of great attention when our DEA showed up in Canada
and served a U.S. warrant against Emery and two associates pursuant to an
international treaty designed to make sure those who commit heinous crimes
cannot find safe harbor in civilized nations. But Emery's only crime was
selling seeds.

Emery proudly pronounced throughout the world that his goal was to sell
enough seeds for Cannabis-loving people to overgrow the repressive regimes
of the drug war. The magazine he helped to create, Cannabis Culture (CC),
openly advertised his seed sales and he paid income taxes as a "marijuana
seed vendor," making the tax-receiving locality complicit in his U.S.
"crimes." Reading a state-controlled newspaper in Malaysia, Emery found an
article on Canadian Cannabis issues.

Armed with the information that Vancouver had the greatest per capita
concentration of smokers and growers, Emery decided to open his own hemp
shop. One of the other hemp stores, Hemp Nation, run by Chris Clay, was
busted by an undercover officer for having a live Cannabis sativa plant,
and a saga of Canadian justice was born when Clay employed Professor Alan
Young to fight the constitutionality of the charges.

Clay's case created a wall of scholarly affidavits that are the foundation
of a new marijuana legal landscape in Canada. The Canadian courts decided
that on face value, Clay's challenge was a non-starter, since they saw no
inherent right to Cannabis and they did see some potential harm from its
use, the court's reading of the facts allowed no room for debate.

The courts also decreed that if medical marijuana access was not offered,
the entire law would be rendered invalid.

Sometime in the middle of this Canadian marijuana saga, Emery decided that
he wouldn't just sell books anymore. Taking his lead from Ben Dronkers of
Holland's Sensi Seed Bank, Marc decided that the best way to effect social
change was to sell seeds via mail order.

Any profit from the sales he would use to pay legal fees for people charged
with marijuana crimes and on legalization efforts, and according to the
DEA, Emery was bringing in 5 million dollars per year! In the United
States, "The sentence of death can be carried out on a defendant who has
been found guilty of manufacturing, importing or distributing a controlled
substance if the act was committed as part of a continuing criminal
enterprise - but only if the defendant is (1) the principal administrator,
organizer or leader of the enterprise, and (2) the quantity of the
controlled substance is 60,000 or more marijuana plants." Thirty days in
jail and a fine versus death penalty or at least 10 years in prison sounds
very stark to me. Yep, that's death for farming.

Or in this case, conspiracy to farm. But conspiring with whom? My research
hints at an unlikely ringleader of this worldwide conspiracy to grow pot.
It seems the kingpin of this massive and brilliant scheme is the plant itself.

Cannabis has known from the beginning that if it mimicked human endogenous
Cannabinoids, chemicals tied to relief of pain and other important human
functions, humans would find the urge to cultivate the plant for its
nutritional, recreational and medicinal benefit overwhelming. But even
though I have no problem believing Cannabis plants are following a master
plan to employ humans as seed delivery devices, I have trouble imagining
the plant coming up with the plan on its own. In his seminal 1855 work,
"The Chemistry of Common Life," Professor Johnston states "It is impossible
to form any estimate of the quantity of hemp, or hemp resin, or of the
artificial extract which is now used in different parts of the world for
purposes of indulgence. It must, however, be very large, since the plant is
so employed by probably not less than two or three hundred millions of the
human race." If there were 300,000,000 Cannabis consumers in 1855, there
must be over half a billion today, and if you ask me, every one of them
should send Emery a Canadian dollar for his defense.