EMERY HAS BECOME MARIJUANA MARTYR

So Marc Emery gets to go from marijuana entrepreneur to marijuana
martyr thanks to the United States Drug Enforcement Agency.

While hard drugs fuel serious criminal enterprise and kill hundreds on
both sides of the law in North America every year, the battle lines in
the war on drugs have deliberately been shifted in the direction of
marijuana, the very illegality of which is a slap in the face of
personal liberty.

Eighty-two per cent of the growth of arrests in the American drug war
from 1990 to 2002 was for marijuana -- 79 per cent for simple
possession. Marijuana now accounts for 45 per cent of annual drug
arrests in the U.S.

The much heralded war on drugs has largely wimped out as it has been
transformed into a war on marijuana to cover up its failure and
futility on other fronts.

Over $4 billion is being spent state-side every year on the arrest,
prosecution and incarceration of marijuana offenders. Better those
monies should be spent to bolster limited enforcement efforts versus
serious crime.

Emery may be a bit of a clown but he is a Canadian icon. His
imprisonment for up to a decade for distributing a plant that does far
less societal harm than tobacco merely demonstrates what a sick circus
the war on drugs has become.

Jamie Harris

London