RELIGION COULD SAVE EMERY

BC Marijuana party officials are planning a constitutional challenge on the
grounds that Canada's prohibition on pot violates people's freedom of
religion. Kirk Tousaw, campaign manager for the party, told the Georgia
Straight that he and others were researching this issue before the July 29
raid on BCMP headquarters and the arrests of president Marc Emery and two
associates. "We had in fact planned to bring the challenge, and still do
plan to bring the challenge within the next couple of months," he said.

Tousaw said that Rastafarians, Gnostics, and certain sects from India use
marijuana as a sacrament. He added that a Pot-TV employee, Chris Bennett,
has written on the subject of cannabis in the Bible, and also uses the drug
as a sacrament. "So we have thought about bringing that kind of challenge
because there is no exemption currently for sacramental use of cannabis,"
Tousaw said. Bennett told the Straight that he first made the links between
marijuana and spirituality while reading the Book of Revelations about 15
years ago. He cited a passage that mentions a "Tree of Life" that bears 12
different "manners" of fruit and produces leaves that are for the healing
of the nations.

"I was overcome with this feeling that light was pouring into my body, and
I started thinking that all these fruits are like the paper, the fuel, the
hemp, seed, food, and the healing leaves was medicine," Bennett said.

Bennett said he then began collecting references to religion and marijuana,
which led him to write two books. He has since concluded that the Bush
administration is conducting a "religious war" against marijuana because
Bush's religious mentors, including preachers Billy Graham and Pat
Robertson, have linked modern drug use to sorcery in the Book of
Revelations. Bennett claimed that's why John Walters, U.S. director of
national drug control policy, is promoting faith-based treatment as an
alternative for young drug users going to jail.

"It's like Christians converting the pagans," Bennett said. "This is why
they have such a fear of this thing: they see it as the pagans burning
their sacrament." Tousaw said that any constitutional challenge based on
religious freedom would be separate from Emery's extra-dition hearing.
However, Tousaw claimed that if the court struck down Canada's marijuana
prohibition because there is no exemption for sacramental and religious
use, it could have an effect on anyone facing extradition on
marijuana-related charges. A prerequisite for extradition is that the
person must be charged with something that is also a crime in his or her
home country.

"It's quite complicated, because when a court deems a statute to be
unconstitutional because it violates the Charter, technically that statute
was unconstitutional from the very day it was enacted," Tousaw said.
"Certainly we would think very carefully about saying in Marc's case: if
marijuana prohibition was invalid during the time for which Marc Emery is
charged with marijuana-related offences, those offences did not exist in
Canadian law. Therefore, he could not be extradited for those offences."
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of religion.
Section 1 states that these rights and freedoms are only subject to
"reasonable limits...as can be demonstrably justified in a free and
democratic society".

After Emery was released on bail, he told CBC Radio that he felt he had
been chosen by God to liberate marijuana users. Emery did not return a call
from the Straight, passed along through Tousaw, to discuss his religious views.

Bennett said that Emery started on this mission after a woman fainted
outside his City Lights bookstore in London, Ontario, several years ago.
"She said, 'When I was outside of your store, I had a vision about you and
a leaf, and money'," Bennett claimed. "She kind of, in many ways,
prophesized [sic] the whole Marc Emery story before it was to take place."

If Emery is extradited to the United States, he faces a prison sentence of
10 years to life if he is convicted on charges of conspiracy to distribute
marijuana, conspiracy to distribute marijuana seeds, and conspiracy to
engage in money-laundering. His associates Gregory Williams and Michelle
Rainey- Fenkarek have been charged with the same offences and are also
facing extradition hearings.