EMERY BLASTS SASKATCHEWAN

SASKATOON -- Marijuana activist Marc Emery was released from jail
Monday and kissed the cannabis-leaf flag his supporters flew for the
duration of his 61 days behind bars. The 45-year-old former Londoner
was sentenced Aug. 19 to three months in jail after pleading guilty to
passing a joint at a pot rally in a Saskatoon park last March.

On his release from the Saskatoon Correctional Centre after serving
two-thirds of his sentence, he launched into a contemptuous diatribe
against what he called Saskatchewan's intolerable attitudes.

"If you had to choose somewhere in Canada to live, you'd really need a
good reason to live in Saskatchewan. . . . There is no beacon of
tolerance and enlightenment that makes you overlook everything else."

Emery, president of the B.C. Marijuana party, withstood driving winds
and snow yesterday to thank the 20 people who gathered to welcome him.
He promised to establish a Saskatchewan chapter of the party within
three months.

Emery owned City Lights bookstore in London before he left, finally
moving to Vancouver. He returned here, however, in August 2003 to
smoke a joint on the front steps of the London police headquarters as
part of a cross-country protest.

"Marijuana does not impair," he said that day. "Marijuana enhances."

Yesterday, he laughed about the weather and lashed out at the prairie
province.

"I was joking with some people (prior) to jail, saying that going to
jail in Saskatoon was like being sent to Siberia. Now I get out and it
is exactly like Siberia. This is a rough place to start out. It's one
of the most inhospitable places on Earth . . . to try and form a
modern-day society. It's a place where droughts hit every five or 10
years, the weather and landscape are formidable and there are tensions
between whites and natives."

Emery owns a marijuana seed store and Internet business in Vancouver.