THIS JOHNNY APPLESEED IS WANTED BY THE LAW

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - FRESHLY released on bail, Marc Emery
faced the camera of his Pot-TV.net Web site the other day to make an
urgent appeal for money to finance his legal struggle to avert
extradition to the United States for trafficking marijuana seeds
south of the border.

"Let me be the light that shines on the American gulag," he said,
stern-eyed, pointing into the camera. Without notes, Mr. Emery
sermonized for a half-hour about everything from the marvelous
medicinal and spiritual qualities of pot to the greatness of Thomas
Jefferson, "who gave America on hemp paper the Declaration of Independence."

"Marijuana made me a better parent, a better lover, a better
businessman," he solemnly told his supporters. Immediately after the
broadcast, he was quick to add, "a better driver, too."

At 47, Mr. Emery is known as the Prince of Pot, even in his recent
federal indictment in Seattle for charges of conspiring to
manufacture marijuana, launder money and traffic millions of
marijuana seeds into the United States. At the time of his arrest, on
July 29, he and his business were on a United States attorney general
list of the 46 most wanted international drug traffickers, and the
only one in Canada. But his clownish nickname provides a clue that
Mr. Emery is not your typical drug kingpin from the movies who deals
in the shadows.

A lanky Canadian with a taste for bland T-shirts and chinos, he
proudly promotes himself as the leader of the sizable Vancouver
marijuana counterculture that is condoned by the municipal government
and much of the city's population. He postures as just a regular guy
who loves the Vancouver Canucks, and rarely smokes more than a joint
or two a day.

But he also freely says that, outside the Netherlands, he has sold
more marijuana seeds and offered the largest selection of any seed
bank in the world. He adds that the amount of seeds he has sold south
of the border "qualifies me for the death penalty in the United
States." (The first claim, of ubiquity, is accepted by American
prosecutors, while the second, of a looming death sentence, is met
with guffaws.)

"I have a master plan," Mr. Emery said in an interview in the offices
of his magazine, Cannabis Culture. "I've wanted to be the Johnny
Appleseed of marijuana, so if we produced millions and millions of
marijuana plants all over the world, it would be impossible for
governments to eradicate or control all of it."

In other words, he added, he wants "to overgrow the governments" that
punish marijuana users.

In his crusade to make marijuana completely legal everywhere, not
just in Canada, where anti-pot laws are already more lenient than in
the United States, Mr. Emery has marketed his seeds and
anti-prohibition message on his Web site and magazine and traveled
around the country smoking marijuana in front of police stations.

As leader of the British Columbia Marijuana Party, he has run
candidates across the province and has himself run for mayor twice in
Vancouver on the platform of disbanding the police force and remaking
it from scratch. Armed with a speaking style that resembles a tommy
gun firing off sound bites, he came in a respectable fifth out of 16
candidates in the last mayoral election, in 2002.

To the growing annoyance of American law enforcement, he has been
openly selling seeds to American growers and counseling them how best
to cultivate his product and avoid the attention of the police - all
with only minor harassment, until now, from Canadian law enforcement.

According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, Mr.
Emery has sold millions of dollars worth of seeds to growers in
California, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, North
Dakota, Tennessee and Virginia.

"He operated his business very efficiently, making a lot of money at
the expense of our kids and the American public," Rodney Benson,
special agent in charge of the D.E.A. field division in Seattle, said
in an interview.

Now, his master plan is in serious jeopardy. In July, the Canadian
police, working with D.E.A. agents, arrested Mr. Emery and raided his
headquarters at the request of the American government, so that he
might be extradited for trial in Seattle. Last week, he was freed on
bail; the extradition process could take years. It is bound to stir a
debate in Canada about whether it should permit a Canadian to stand
trial in the United States for an offense that is essentially tolerated here.

But for the time being, Mr. Emery's empire is in tatters. He has been
forced to lay off workers at his magazine and Web site, and because
he can no longer sell seeds, his ability to finance
marijuana-legalization causes has dried up. He says he must move to a
smaller apartment, give up his car lease and live on the equivalent
of $32 a day from donations.

"Lets face it," Mr. Emery said in an interview. "I've sold millions
of seeds and I've been doing it every day of my life the last 11
years. I'm so transparent that everyone from the prime minister to
the guy on the street knows it."

He says he has made $4 million in profit since 1996 selling seeds in
his Vancouver store, by mail and on the Internet. But he says he has
not saved a dime, does not own a share of stock or bonds, does not
even own a piece of property.

ALL the money he has made, he says, has gone into his magazine, his
Internet Pot-TV news channel, his British Columbia Marijuana Party,
various referendum initiatives for marijuana legalization in the
United States, legal fees for marijuana growers in several countries
and support for his wife, various ex-lovers and four adopted children.

He also claims to have paid nearly $600,000 in taxes from the
proceeds of his seeds, noting openly on his tax returns that he
worked as a vendor of marijuana seeds.

Mr. Emery describes himself as "a responsible libertarian, not a
hedonist," who extols the virtues of capitalism, low taxes, small
government and the right of citizens to bear arms.

He said he grew up a social democrat, influenced by his father, who
was active in trade union work. But he said his life changed in 1979
when he began reading the works of Ayn Rand, who championed
individual freedom and capitalism.

"The right to be free, the right to own the fruits of your mind and
effort now all made sense," he recalled. Only a few months after
discovering Rand, his girlfriend at the time offered him a joint and
he smoked marijuana for the first time.

IT was an epiphany," he said. "I had a sixth sense added to my five
senses. The silence sounded different, smells were more nuanced and
the brightness of the moon made it look bigger and more substantial
in the sky."

The combination of Rand's philosophy and the marijuana set him on a
course of advocacy in which, he said, "I decided to dedicate my whole
life to repudiate the state."

Then living in London, Ontario, he sold banned marijuana and
pornography books and magazines, contested laws limiting the right of
stores to open on Sundays and led a municipal tax revolt. He even
resisted a municipal garbage strike, by renting a truck and picking
up the garbage himself.

After traveling for a while in Asia, however, he has dedicated his
efforts to promoting marijuana and its culture.

"Now the Goliath, now the evil empire has made its move on me," Mr.
Emery told his Web site audience. But he promised that his crusade
would continue "till liberty or till death."